Tourist bloat

The tourist liners are back!  Covid-19 collapsed the cruising industry that brought 1-2 liners to Dunedin every day, so this sighting this morning was the first for a couple of years.  Some go clockwise around Aotearoa New Zealand, others counter-clockwise. Today’s blip shows a liner around 10 km offshore at about 5 am as it headed to Dunedin to berth in time for the well-breakfasted tourists to disgorge onto the Dunedin streets for a day’s site seeing.

We see the other liners heading north in the evening as the inmates feast, dance and then sleep their way to Akaroa, near Christchurch.
Many people celebrate the reinstatement of the tourism now that we have decided to let people die by largely ignoring the Covid-19 risks.  It was as if the planet took a deep breath and had a bit of a rest for a year or two.  We saw families out walking during lock down … fathers learned their children’s names ... even read them stories ... took them bike riding etc.  We rediscovered old ways and found new pleasures and skills … gosh, a newly retired ecologist even decided to try to learn photography. It was in many ways Covid forced a mini rebirth, or a blip (my favourite new word).

But now we are charging back to the same old ways.  The tourist liners are a case in point. Unfortunately, detailed reporting of energy use of cruise ships is lacking, so comparing the carbon footprint of cruising compared to flying is difficult. Cruise ships require a lot of energy, both for moving through water and for ancillary services (i.e. generators for electricity to deliver on-board services). Even highly efficient propulsion systems burn about 4,200 litres of fuel per hour. In one study, the average cruise ship passenger emitted 0.83 tonnes of CO2-equivalent just for their cruise [Source]. Most packages would also include some air travel to the port of embarkation and back home, adding to the overall footprint. As for international airlines, cruising companies do not need to include the carbon emissions from their liners in annual country emission reporting, so it’s as if the world’s politicians have turned a blind eye to a huge part of the planetary carbon burden coming from non-domestic tourism.
 
Whatever the passengers on the liner think about carbon emissions, let’s hope they at least saw the nice sunrise building outside the cabin portholes. Photographing the liner was right on the limit of my 400mm zoom lens, but really for me it was the sunrise that rewarded me for getting myself out of bed.