Cruise ships clock fewer miles, but drop significantly more waste into the ocean than commercial shipping, WWFC reports

This story was originally published in The Westshore newsletter, March 8, 2022.

The World Wildlife Fund Canada recently published a report showing the estimated volume of waste generated from ship traffic on Canada’s coasts. They broke down types of ships, types of waste, and where it gets dumped.

The number one waste producer, despite having relatively low traffic compared to other ships, is cruise ships. The number one waste-receiver are the Scott Islands off the north tip of Vancouver Island. The little archipelago is a major breeding spot for seabirds, a protected marine area, and happens to be a very busy marine traffic route.

The WWFC calculated that over 4 million litres of waste is dropped around the Scott Islands every year. By far the largest type of waste by volume is something called scrubber washwater.

"Scrubbers" clean residue off a ships’s engine and boiler exhaust that gathers as the engine burns heavy oil to run. Everything that comes off the engine goes into the scrubber washwater. According to WWFC the washwater "is acidic and contains large amounts of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which can be toxic and have carcinogenic properties. It also reduces the ocean’s ability to buffer climate change—for every ton of sulfur dioxide discharged by scrubbers, the ocean will be unable to absorb about half a ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

The Scott Islands may be on the opposite tip of the Island from the Westshore, but many of the cruise ships that we’ll soon see sailing past us pass these ecologically fragile areas. Namely, the second highest waste-receiving area identified in Canada is an area called the Offshore Pacific Seamounts and Vents. It sounded like a machine room to me at first, but it’s actually an 82,530-sq.-km protected area of coral and glass sponge reefs that grow on seamounts—underwater mountains—and around hydrothermal vents—underwater hot springs. And it’s off the west coast of Vancouver Island. There’s a fisheries closure there, but seemingly no problem with dumping scrubber washwater.

WWFC reports that most ship waste is dumped as it’s created, so the cruises and container shipping routes leave long trails of scrubber washwater, oily bilge water, sewage, and greywater. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has regulations around dumping in marine protected areas, but it doesn’t prevent dumping of scrubber washwater. That’s one of the main actions WWFC is calling for in its report.

What do you think about dumping from cruise ships? Cruise season will be ramping up soon. It’s a big part of the business plan for many Victoria shops and restaurants. Should the government do more to regulate protection on Pacific waters? Let me know at [email protected]