This week, Juneau answered its last cruise ship port call of the season. Though out of sight, the colossal ships are not out of mind for many residents around Southeast Alaska. Gone to warmer climates, as these ships head back down south there’s a growing concern about the path of devastation they knowingly leave in the waters beneath them.
During the first ever Clean Water Town Hall in Juneau, hosted by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), panelists spoke about the negative impacts cruise ship pollutants have on human health, the marine mammal food chain and the region’s commercial seafood industry.
“The big takeaway here is that scrubber pollution is toxic to marine life at very low concentrations,” said Kay Brown of Pacific Environment. “Studies found that concentrations of scrubber wastewater as low as 1/10,000 of 1% […] have toxic effects on marine life.”
Experiments have shown that critical components of the food chain for endangered species such as killer whales in Canada’s southern seas are suffering negative effects. The long-term effect is a decreased food source for species already struggling against a warming climate and habitat loss. Further bio-accumulation of these toxins up the food chain raises the likelihood of cancer across the board for marine mammals and humans alike. Further, Brown said that these toxic pollutants have been documented to affect neurological development in children among a long list of other harmful effects on human health.
Looking at Southeast Alaska as a whole, cruise ships made thousands of port visits this year – about 650 of which were made to Juneau. Over the course of a one week trip, a large cruise ship can generate and dump its own volume of toxic discharge into the same oceans they depend on for ticket sales.
“Heavy fuel oil is made from the leftover junk of refining. It’s the last thing to boil off in a refining distillation column,” said Aaron Brakel, SEACC’s Clean Water Campaign Manager, at the town hall. “It’s the dirtiest and cheapest fossil fuel oil in use today.”
In this region, HFO is used almost exclusively among the large cruise ships. Neither tugs, barges, the Alaska Marine Highway fleet, commercial fishing vessels, nor vessels associated with onshore power generation are burning this bottom of the barrel sludge. In fact, HFO isn’t even sold up here – it’s loaded up down south before being brought into the region. One point was made clear by the panel: the solution is to simply require that cruise ships use cleaner fuel.
“This is something we can make a difference on,” said Brakel. “It’s a real problem, and there is a solution that we here in Alaska can move forward.”
As momentum swings in the direction of a call for legislation, Senator Jesse Kiehl (D-Juneau) was present in the audience, it’s important to note that there are already about 80 different ports around the world with bans or restrictions on this type of fuel.
We even see bans in this neck of the woods, further emphasizing the urgency with which action needs to be taken. HFO cannot be used in Glacier Bay National Park nor within the jurisdiction of the Port of Vancouver. Further down south, HFO is banned within 24 miles of the California coast.
“The International Maritime Organization has essentially ceded authority over this to local ports and regions and indicated that they don’t have enough consensus to actually make a decision, though there are efforts underway to try to get them to do something,” said Brown. “We’d like to see Alaska follow the lead of all of these other jurisdictions.”
Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, spoke to the impacts this pollution is having on the commercial fishing industry. Noting the Seabank Report, which quantifies the economic value of healthy ecosystems in Southeast Alaska, Behnken shared that commercial fishing in this region supports more than 10,000 jobs and adds over $800 million per year in economic outputs.
“This resource as a whole depends on us doing our part to keep those fisheries healthy,” said Behnken. “Something I hear repeatedly from ASMI (Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute) in their outreach is that marketing Alaska as [having healthy and pristine waters] is what sells fish wherever they go … To us, it feels like a real mandate to burn clean fuels here in Alaska.”
These fuels are especially adept at impacting local food sources and will have disproportionate effects on subsistence-based communities, something noted by Gloria Burns Ilsxilee Stáng, president of the Ketchikan Indian Community. The practical reality is that these fuel systems create an environment in Ketchikan depleted of the clams and cockles she grew up harvesting. Further, Burns noted it’s not difficult to connect the dots between the studies proving that these fuel discharges are full of carcinogens and the high rate of breast cancer in her own family.
“The median income of my tribal citizens [is] $30,000 yearly … Those people are relying on the land to be taken care of and the ocean,” said Burns. “This is bigger than just the impacts to all of these different industries, but when you’re looking at a population that isn’t going anywhere, that is going to have all these cancer situations, you know, we have to figure out a way to do better and be better.”
Unlike many of the environmental problems we face today, this one benefits from a clear, concise solution backed by science and proven successful in many other jurisdictions around the world: ban HFO.
Rachel Levy is a Juneau-based photojournalist whose work culminates at the intersections of environmental justice, arts and culture, and sustainable tourism. A 2022 graduate of Harvard University's Environmental Policy program, she is also the director of the award-winning documentary "Hidden in Plain Sight" that exposes the labor exploitation and colonial framework burdening Tanzania's safari industry.
