From the comfort of cruise ships, a typical trip to Alaska offers magnificent views of glaciers and wild national parks, and visits to picturesque coastal towns. For years, these sweepstakes have made cruises in Alaska the most booked vacation in the United States.
But the trip to these pristine areas, which involves sailing the west coast of Canada for two to three days, is leaving behind a trail of toxic waste, even within marine protected areas (MPAs), according to new research .
According to a report by environmental organizations Stand.earth and West Coast, it is estimated that more than 31 billion liters (8.5 billion US gallons) of pollution a year are dumped on the west coast of Canada by cruise ships heading in Alaska. Environmental Law (WCEL).
“There’s this perverse incentive to treat Canada like a toilet bowl,” says Anna Barford, Canada’s shipping activist at Stand.earth. “They’re just using us as a road and throwing things left, right and center.”
A killer whale, or killer whale, in Johnstone Strait, British Columbia, Canada. Cruise waste dumps pose a significant risk to marine life. Photography: François Gohier / VWPics / Alamy
At Canada’s 151,019 miles (243,042 km) coast, ships generate 147 billion gallons of harmful waste each year, the equivalent of 59,000 Olympic swimming pools, according to a March 2022 WWF-Canada report. Based on data from more than 5,000 ships, the report found that cruises were the most polluting, although they accounted for only 2% of the maritime traffic analyzed.
Cruise pollution includes large volumes of toxic wastewater from toilets, gray sink water, showers and washbasins, and bilge water, the oily liquid that accumulates in the lower part of a ship. The largest source of pollution identified in the WWF report was, by far, so-called scrubbers, devices installed to remove exhaust gases such as sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide, as well as particles, from the heavy oil in the bunker used as marine fuel. The scrubbers create acidic wastewater that contains a cocktail of chemicals.
On a week-long trip to Alaska and back to the Canadian coast, a cruise ship will generate about 200 million gallons of waste from scrubbers, according to the Stand.earth and WCEL report. While ships can decide whether to unload into the sea or into a port, most waste from the scrubbers is dumped as they are generated.
Globally, cruises have an irregular history of maintaining environmental regulations, including within Alaska, but Pacific waters off the coast of British Columbia are especially polluted. This is because of the many cruise ships, but also because Canada’s federal dump regulations are less stringent than U.S. laws, according to WCEL attorney Michael Bissonnette, especially compared to Washington and Alaska regulations, both US states at each end of Canada’s west coast.
A protest in April against the discharge of sewage from cruise ships arriving in Vancouver. Photography: Jennifer Gauthier / Reuters
In Washington, more than 6,000 km2 (2,300 square miles) of ocean habitat are protected in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, near the Canadian border, and it is now classified as a no-discharge zone. Alaska requires cruise ships to apply for and receive permission to discharge wastewater and gray water.
These regulations encourage ships “to keep their waste when they are in American waters and then to dispose of it when they are in Canadian waters,” says Bissonnette.
In Canadian waters, untreated cruise wastewater can be legally discharged outside a 12-mile limit under ship pollution regulations, which can often overlap with critical habitats. Meanwhile, treated wastewater, which includes waste from toilets and gray water from sinks and laundries, can be dumped three nautical miles off the coast.
It’s a terrible way to say goodbye to a community you just visited. Anna Barford, Stand.earth
Sigrid Kuehnemund, WWF-Canada’s vice president of wildlife and industry, says that while each federal MPA has its own regulations, very few in Canada ban operational waste dumping: all waste that accumulates on board when ships work. “The regulations that protect MPAs at the moment give the shipping industry a free pass and there are no clear regulations that restrict dumping within these limits.”
Efforts are underway to tighten pollution regulations. In April, on the eve of the new cruise season, the federal government’s Department of Transport Canada announced new measures to limit graywater and wastewater discharges from cruise ships operating in Canadian waters.
However, while it is welcome, the move is not enough, Bissonnette says, noting that the measures are voluntary and do not apply to scrubbers.
Tourists visit the Hubbard Glacier on a cruise to Alaska. Photography: Shorex.koss / Alamy
When released into the ocean, the wide range of toxic substances pose a significant threat to aquatic wildlife and the habitat and trophic networks on which they depend, including endangered populations of otters and killer whales that live. on the coast of British Columbia.
About 10% of the wash water discharged from ships in British Columbia occurred within critical killer whale habitats, according to an analysis by the International Council on Clean Transport. A particular alarm, Kuehnemund says, is the threat to wildlife in the Scott Islands Marine National Park, a group of five islands at the northwest end of Vancouver Island. This protected area is subject to the greatest amount of pollution from cruise discharges, according to the WWF report.
A Steller sea lion feeds on salmon off the coast of Alaska. Photography: Ron Niebrugge / Alamy
Located on a busy cruise route, the park is home to some of Steller’s largest sea lion colonies in the world. Every spring, more than 1 million seabirds – including 90% of Canadian friars and half of the world’s Cassin auklets – breed on the island’s cliffs. Kuehnemund describes the area as “a biodiversity hotspot.”
There is fear in some coastal communities that as cruise traffic increases, so will the threat to their waters. Popular port destinations such as Victoria and Seattle have seen protests over the return of cruise ships following the lifting of pandemic restrictions.
Fisheries communities in southeast Alaska also complain about the waste dumped into their waters bordering Canada, fearing that critical fish species would be exposed to harmful substances.
One fisherman, Mark Severson, recalls that in the summer of 2019 he sailed through miles of foamy yellow waters to Petersburg, a small island community about 30 miles from the Canadian border and a popular harbor along the route. of Alaska Cruises. Since then, Severson and his wife, Karen, have advocated for stronger control of waste dumping on cruise ships.
“Passengers who love cruising through Alaska don’t even realize that ships are polluting our pristine parts of the world,” he says.
With the new pollution measures in place, a Transport Canada spokesman said, “Canada is among the countries with the strictest requirements for this type of dumping in the world.” The department said it recognized concerns about scrubber waste in Canadian waters and was working to develop approaches that could reduce dumping.
But Barford argues that only when Canada implements mandatory regulations will the problem of cruise pollution be addressed. “It’s a terrible way to say goodbye to a community you just visited,” he says. “Gesturing from behind while the ship empties its tank. That’s not something I’d want to leave behind.”