Southeast Alaska Conservation Council<\/a> in August last year found 17 of Carnival Corp\u2019s ships reported more than 700 water discharge violations in Alaska in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\nAccording to US policy resource centre Good Jobs First, Carnival has racked up more than US$89 million ($151m) in penalties for violations since 2000, including 14 records of environment-related offences of more than US$72m.<\/p>\n
Authorities not concerned about Carnival\u2019s issues<\/p>\n
Maritime NZ says it is \u201caware of previous Carnival Corp issues in the US\u201d, but \u201chas no concerns about Discovery Princess being in New Zealand\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Australian Maritime Safety Authority inspected Discovery Princess in January 2026. Under an arrangement known as the Tokyo MOU, maritime regulators in the Asia Pacific region share information from inspections with each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the recent Australian inspection finding no significant issues, Discovery Princess was not inspected again on its arrival in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auckland harbourmaster Andrew Hayton and the Port of Auckland echoed similar sentiments about the Discovery Princess and Carnival.<\/p>\n
![\"A]()
A recent protest against Princess Cruises at Port Chalmers.<\/p>\n
\u2018Like a filter on a cigarette\u2019<\/p>\n
Princess Cruises operates four cruise ships calling at New Zealand in the 2025-26 season: Discovery Princess, Crown Princess, Coral Princess and Island Princess.<\/p>\n
The Discovery Princess and Crown Princess reported a combined 85 water discharge violations from their scrubbers in Alaska in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n
Bruce Mahalski, a spokesman for Climate Liberation Aotearoa and Global Cruise Activist Network, believes Carnival is the \u201cworst outfit out there operating\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see scrubbers as just like a Band-Aid, like a filter on a cigarette, to try and make it seem like there\u2019s something that\u2019s being done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Timothy Welch, professor of urban planning at the University of Auckland, describes scrubbers as a \u201cloophole\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just takes the sulphur out of the exhaust and dumps it in the water. We\u2019ve basically replaced what\u2019s in the atmosphere and was blocking the sunlight and condensed it down and just started dropping it into the water itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gadd agrees with those sentiments \u201cto an extent\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not really solving a problem, we\u2019re just kind of shifting a problem. But then it\u2019s about which system is the most controllable and how you can deal with the waste the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Environmental risk<\/p>\n
The 2021 Niwa report, commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment, sought to understand the environmental risks associated with scrubbers after there was \u201ca bit of concern around it\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe risks are really restricted to places where you\u2019ve got less circulation,\u201d Gadd says. \u201cSo where the scrubbers are being used in the open ocean or in shipping lanes, there\u2019s really minimal risk, and dilution is the solution in those cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then when we\u2019re around ports, and particularly harbours that are more enclosed \u2013 I think Lyttelton came out as being one that was at the higher end of the risks that we found \u2013 that\u2019s where there\u2019s potential for risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut even at those locations, the risks associated with the scrubbers were not that significant compared to all the other issues that some of these harbours already have related to stormwater or industrial discharges and things. So they\u2019re already locations that are, you know, not pristine.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A]()
A cruise ship in Lyttelton Harbour.<\/p>\n
Banned in many countries but not in NZ<\/p>\n
There are two kinds of scrubbers used by cruise ships: open-loop and closed-loop.<\/p>\n
Open-loop scrubbers take gaseous emissions that would have been discharged into the air and funnel them straight into the ocean, while closed-loop scrubbers contain the discharge to be disposed of elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe identified potential risks with open-loop scrubbers when used in ports, including at Lyttelton, and in Akaroa Harbour (associated with cruise ships), but no risks associated with the closed-loop scrubbers, which have lower overall emission rates,\u201d Gadd says.<\/p>\n
Discovery Princess and many other Carnival ships use open-loop scrubbers, which have been banned in many countries.<\/p>\n
New Zealand has only non-statutory guidance around scrubbers, with the Ministry for the Environment saying that it requests all ships using the systems to \u201coperate closed-loop scrubbers in zero discharge mode and retain any waste on board until it can be disposed of at the next available port reception facility\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, that guidance has not been followed by many cruise ships in New Zealand waters.<\/p>\n
Industry under the microscope<\/p>\n
In a typical year, more than 25 cruise ships visit New Zealand\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n
Welch believes the public should be concerned about the industry\u2019s impact on the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a significant impact on the environment, whether it\u2019s water or air.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also plays down the often-touted impact on the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do hear a lot about is their contribution to tourism dollars here but \u2026 [it\u2019s a] very small impact except for very localised areas overall on our economy, versus the environmental impact that they have nationwide.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Cruise]()
Cruise unique passenger numbers and cruise tourism spending by regions in 2019. Source \/ Department of Conservation<\/p>\n
A 2024 study<\/a> published by the Department of Conservation on the economic and environmental impact of cruise ships on the Milford Sound, a Unesco World Heritage site, confirmed Welch\u2019s views.<\/p>\nIt found that the cruise ship industry was a \u201cniche tourism market in New Zealand, accounting for around 1% of total tourism expenditure\u201d, while the environmental impact and costs were \u201csignificant\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cInternational research casts considerable doubt upon the economic impacts of cruise tourism and its wider contributions to national and local economies,\u201d it concluded.<\/p>\n
\u201cManaging the impacts of cruise tourism can not rely on voluntary commitments and self-reporting. Third-party independent reporting is required to ensure that measurement and mitigation is transparent and publicly reported.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahaski is one of many critics calling for more regulation: \u201cWhere do you start with the amount of regulation that still needs to be done on this industry?\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the way that cruise ships operate, often by using tax-haven flag states such as Bermuda, the Bahamas and Panama, makes the industry difficult to regulate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way that a lot of these companies work is that a lot of the ships are flagged in countries that are very friendly to lax environmental standards and labour standards,\u201d Welch says.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they aren\u2019t heavily regulated in the sense that they mostly spend a lot of their time in international waters, so they don\u2019t really have to comport to any specific standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a small country, so the amount of power we have to foist our own controls on to a huge industry like cruise lines is pretty limited. So we\u2019re a bit beholden to the powers of these huge cruise lines and limited by what we can actually do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The dispute centred around the discharge of exhaust gas cleaning systems, also known as scrubbers. The relatively new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,29893,26977,5195,138,1559,20787,8615,1656,15245,10039,6694,2037,5658,130078,2079,1437,10938,76,13840,15220,440,5829,111,139,69,90,215799,1523,3236,9433,215800,60776,3271,44970,9939,145,1361,8238,9938,14905,5977,80],"class_list":["post-420261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-authorities","tag-banned","tag-be","tag-business","tag-called","tag-cigarette","tag-come","tag-company","tag-concerned","tag-controversial","tag-countries","tag-cruise","tag-experts","tag-filter","tag-fire","tag-global","tag-herald","tag-issue","tag-like","tag-line","tag-local","tag-many","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-operates","tag-over","tag-overseas","tag-scientists","tag-scrubbers","tag-ships","tag-should","tag-spoke","tag-states","tag-technology","tag-that","tag-under","tag-united","tag-whether","tag-which","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}