Environmental Compliance and Practices of Cruise Ships in Ísafjörður, Iceland

The drastic growth of cruise tourism in the world, while potentially beneficial for economic growth in local communities, also brings concerns regarding environmental impacts. This research used the port of Ísafjörður, Iceland, a growing hotspot destination for cruise ships, as a case study to aid in understanding the potential environmental impacts from cruise ships. The study’s aims were: 1) to determine the quantity and type of waste discharged to the shore facilities by cruise ships in Ísafjörður in 2019, and 2) to explore the compliance behavior of the ships in adhering to Icelandic and international environmental regulations. To do this, quantitative and qualitative questions were presented in a survey to officers from 40 cruise ships, accounting for 87% of the total 46 different ships that docked in Ísafjörður in the 2019 cruise ship season. The survey questions were designed based on the MARPOL Convention and the law of Iceland, and these questions were compared with the ship’s statutory record or ship’s certificates to strengthen the reliability of the data. The questions covered five categories: emissions, waste oil, wastewater, garbage and food waste, and ballast water. Results showed that very little garbage and food waste had been discharged to shore facilities, and this was likely because Ísafjörður is one of several stops for many cruise ships in Iceland and the waste had simply been discharged elsewhere. In assessing the other four categories, eight out of the 40 cruise ships carried out illegal activities, including 12 specific violation cases. This paper discusses three primary reasons for those violations: accessibility, inconsistency, and monitoring. This research was conducted pre-COVID-19, however, by 2022 cruise ship calls in Ísafjörður approached pre-COVID-19 numbers. Interested parties such as local communities, national decision makers, tourism boards, municipal planners, and environmental agencies must use the best available knowledge, such as this study, to manage the positive and negative aspects of the growth of cruise ship tourism, and perhaps even more so in a post-COVID-19 phase.