IN FOCUS
Cruise Ships
Small town Iceland isn’t what it used to be. During the peak summer season, some of Iceland’s coastal communities are bustling with cruise ship tourists, overwhelming local residents many times over. For some, these tourists represent an injection of cosmopolitan vitality into otherwise small, sleepy towns. For others, they represent the noise, pollution, and crowds of the big city, everything an Icelandic fishing town isn’t.
From 2017 to 2023, a 103% increase in total cruise ship arrivals has been registered across Iceland.
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Photography by Golli
Bigger and bigger When the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Symphony of the Sea launched in 2018, it was the largest cruise ship in the world. Longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, it was also approximately five times the total tonnage of the RMS Titanic. When it arrived in Barcelona to begin its maiden voyage, however, it was met with protests by locals. Barcelona has some of the worst air quality in all of Europe, thanks in large part to its port. The arrival of the cruise ship was not just potentially damaging locals’ health, they argued; it also brought very little economic benefit, with the average tourist spending about €57 in the city and then spending the night aboard the ship. Since 2018, cruise ships have only gotten bigger. As tourism continues to break records both in Iceland and internationally following the COVID slump, policymakers, scientists, and travellers have all been made increasingly aware of its environmental impact. Much of the discourse has recently revolved around air travel, which contributes approximately 2.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the cruise ship industry is significantly more harmful to the environment on a per-passenger basis than
Words by Erik Pomrenke
flight. A 2019 study by the NGO Transport & Environment found that ships operated by just one cruise line, Carnival, emitted ten times as much sulphur oxide (SOX) as Europe’s entire passenger vehicle fleet that year. While this is just one greenhouse gas, the numbers paint a troubling picture. And while an airline traveller can fly to their destination and disembark to their hotel, short-term rental, or luxury spa, cruise ships drag their luxury destinations around the world with them, burning some of the most-polluting types of fuel while doing so. It is generally not the largest cruise ships that frequent Iceland’s ports, but even comparatively “small” ones may feature casinos, movie theatres, swimming pools, spas, arcades, and upwards of 2,000 passengers aboard. Power play Running the infrastructure of a small town takes power, and most cruise ships to date have used “bunker oil,” a cheap but highly pollutive fuel source. Diesel fuel is a viable and comparatively clean alternative but is significantly more expensive than bunker oil. Furthermore, it is not just at sea that cruise ships have to burn fuel. In order to keep the