Princess Lines Fined $500,000 For Dumping : Environment: A passenger with a videocamera caught a crew member heaving bags of trash into the ocean, in violation of new law.

A nighttime videotape of a crew member tossing trash off a ship will cost Princess Cruise Lines $500,000 and “send a loud and clear signal” to stop pollution, the Coast Guard said Thursday.

The fine is the first criminal penalty assessed in the United States for dumping plastics at sea and the largest ever set for ocean dumping, federal prosecutors said in announcing the case.

The cruise line has agreed to plead guilty and pay the maximum fine for violating a federal anti-dumping law. The violation occurred off the coral-lined Florida Keys. Plastics are blamed for the deaths of thousands of marine animals each year.

“We want to send a loud and clear signal that we can’t tolerate any environmental pollution, whether it’s plastics or oil or anything,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jim Howe said.

A passenger on the Regal Princess was taping as a crew member chucked more than 20 large plastic bags into the Florida Straits about five miles off Duck Key on Oct. 25, 1991, according to the criminal charge filed Thursday.

The tape by a passenger who identified himself only as Al has been aired on NBC’s “I Witness Video.” The man asked his wife to get his camera after stepping out on deck and seeing the bags being tossed just below him.

The videotape was buttressed by statements from other passengers and crew members, and the ship’s log proved the ship was well within the 200-mile U.S. territorial limit to give the Justice Department jurisdiction.

Most instances of ocean dumping are handled as civil cases, but the stark evidence and a recent enhancement of Coast Guard investigative powers persuaded prosecutors to pursue the criminal charge.

“If it had just been an eyewitness act, that would have been pretty good,” Howe said. “The videotape was a real clincher for us.”

An international treaty banning the dumping of plastics at sea in 1988 curtailed an age-old tradition of throwing ship waste overboard, and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 gave the Coast Guard stronger powers and money to pursue environmental polluters.

“It’s a very progressive, good law,” Howe said. “If you don’t prosecute, what good is the law?”

Princess President Timothy Harris has agreed to personally appear to enter the guilty plea, but the date has not been set.