ENVIRONMENT
Lake Superior’s Cruise Ship Problem
As tourists turn to “underexplored” ports, luxury fleet operators are sailing through environmental loopholes
BY LEAH BORTS-KUPERMAN
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE PRINCE
Published 6:30, August 21, 2024
Lake Superior’s Cruise Ship Problem
Robert Stewart, a Lakehead University professor who researches water security in Thunder Bay, has kayaked Lake Superior for decades.
“I might see a moose on the shore. I might see all different types of birds land on the water around me. I might see a school of fish under me—all the things that aren’t only great to see but let you know that there’s a healthy ecosystem.” But he’s recently had to get used to something new: large luxury cruise ships approaching the typically pristine areas. “As soon as that boat [comes] in, it gets loud. You don’t notice it at first, but the hum is there, and every animal splits.”
The city of Thunder Bay is known as the “Gateway to Northwest Ontario” and the 150,000 lakes and rivers in the area. Visitors come to experience rolling mountains, majestic forests, and Lake Superior—North America’s largest freshwater lake and, by many measures, one of the healthiest. Cruise companies are picking up on the region’s natural offerings. One 2025 Viking cruise, marketed as the “Undiscovered Great Lakes” voyage, will take passengers from Thunder Bay to Milwaukee to “hike boreal forests, watch for wildlife and learn about Anishinaabe First Nations heritage.” An eight-day voyage on these floating hotels with swimming pools, buffets, theatres, and spas starts at about $9,000 per person.
Cruise ships have been coming to Thunder Bay since 1996 but paused for some time amid infrastructure issues and changes in popular cruise ship itineraries. Following improvements to the city’s marina and cruise terminal, luxury cruiser fleet operators like Viking returned in 2022 after a decade-long absence. Now, while the global cruise industry battles growing concerns over its emissions, noise, and pollution, 2024 is set to see a record of seventeen cruise ships in the lake port from late spring into fall.
This pattern is expected to boom, creating tension between tourists who want to experience “unexplored” nature and the fact that the very act of arriving on cruise ships is poised to ruin the things drawing them to the region. Lax Canadian cruising regulations allow for luxury cruises to sail through giant loopholes in environmental protections.
“The problem with cruise ships is the pollution, and they create a lot of pollution,” says Anna Barford, an environmental engineer. Barford is also the Canada shipping campaigner from Stand.earth, an organization of strategists, researchers, and experts demanding environmental reform from Canadian industries.
In her role, Barford has studied the effects of cruise ships in Vancouver, Canada’s main cruising port—the country’s been dubbed the “toilet bowl” for its high levels of sewage and grey water.
“Because cruise ships are very energy intensive, because it’s a luxury travel experience, there is a lot more pollution that comes with it,” Barford says.
Cities like Venice and Barcelona have banned or strictly limited cruise ships because of their effects on air, water, soil, and wildlife. A cruise ship with a capacity of 2,000 to 3,000 passengers can generate 1,000 tonnes of waste per day. While the cruises that can actually get into the Great Lakes are somewhat smaller, this means that the daily waste per passenger comes to at least 300 litres of grey water, forty of black water, ten of bilge water, three and a half kilos of garbage, and thirty grams of toxic waste.
Cruises in Nunavut have been reported to deplete narwhal numbers, threatening a key food source in a region with unsustainably expensive groceries. Thunder Bay is also well known for its traditional hunting and fishing territories.
In 2022, Transport Canada implemented interim measures for cruise ships to follow, including avoiding grey water and sewage discharge within three nautical miles of the shore and appropriately treating sewage, with filtration and chemical procedures or through biological composting, when possible. Its second interim order, a copy-paste of the first, expired in June this year. Now the agency has further renewed the interim order until 2025—which Stand.earth has called a “lazy” approach, especially given the increased number of cruise ships in new areas.
Barford says the biggest loopholes are the lack of independent monitoring to ensure cruise ships are actually following regulations, and the unregulated use of a technology called “scrubbers.” Scrubbers are devices on ships to treat exhaust gases. They take sulphur from fuel and put it into the water in the form of waste water, essentially turning air pollution into water pollution.
Transport Canada promised to look into these scrubbers and “other areas of concern” but has not addressed them in the most recent update. What’s especially concerning to Thunder Bay is that these interim orders don’t specifically mention the Great Lakes; they only reference marine environments—which could result in yet another loophole.
Thunder Bay Tourism is courting cruise ships to bring much-needed economic stimulus to the region. Tourism Manager Paul Pepe told local news in March that two cruise ships in the port in one day is a “nice problem to have.” He told The Walrus that the economic boost for the community was about $4.3 million last year, and that cruising “really helps amplify Thunder Bay as a destination to the global curious traveller.”
Pepe is a cruiser in his personal life. In his professional opinion, he has no concerns about the environmental impact of cruises and says that the city has not been monitoring any potential environmental impacts and has no plans to do so in the future. He says cruise lines are “environmentally considerate in terms of their operations. They’re aware that they’re going into sensitive areas, and they conduct themselves accordingly.”
Tourism development is one of Thunder Bay’s five strategic pillars for economic development, and this development is critical in a city where up to one in ten people live below the poverty line. To court future cruises, local news sites have reported, Superior Country, an organization promoting tourism in the region, will host a six-day “familiarization tour” for representatives of cruise lines next year.
“When the Viking smokestacks and the Viking logos on the side of their stack [are] in the harbour, people see that big logo lit up. They get excited by it. They say, ‘Wow, Viking is coming to Thunder Bay. They must love what we have here,’” Pepe says. “And the guests do: they love the fresh air, they love the clean water, they love the friendliness of small communities.”
In the meantime, leadership is reshaping the community to attract cruise tourists. The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is planning to move adjacent to the cruise terminal next year, and the city has already invested $5 million into revamping the waterfront area. These have been exciting, long-awaited signs of progress for some residents in a city which has the benefits of natural beauty and a vibrant culture but which suffers from significant poverty and public spaces in need of improvement and development.
Magazines like Travel Weekly have said these cruises are a sign that the Great Lakes are emerging as “that rarest of unicorns: a bona fide new destination for the cruise industry.” Put simply: there are not too many new places to go on cruises, and the five lakes make up a group of large freshwater bodies on Earth with “dozens of underexplored ports of call.” They are within driving distance, or a quick flight, from many US cities. But this location is especially concerning given Lake Superior is also the source of Thunder Bay’s water supply.
The arriving cruises make an ostensible effort to seem eco-friendly, some with on-board naturalists and locally sourced culinary ingredients. Viking’s Great Lakes cruises partner with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and are equipped with scientific technology meant to capture data about the lake. The company proclaimed in 2020: “We want to continue to be a role model in environmental thinking and new climate-smart technology.”
However, for locals and environmentalists alike, it is important to remain cautious about these promises given a lack of federal oversight and enforcement. Despite the promises of an economic boom, it would be a tragedy to forget it’s the healthy, flourishing lake that makes this region such a draw.
“One of the best things about Northwestern Ontario, and about Thunder Bay, is how close we are to nature, and how close we are to this really special place where we have clean water, where we have fresh air,” says Victoria Russell-Matthews, a Metis artist born and raised in Thunder Bay.
She questions whether the benefits of this tourism outweigh the risks to the land: “Cruise ships are very much a testament to human vanity,” Russell-Matthews says. “At the end of the day, we need to question: What are the things that we value most, long term?”
Leah Borts-Kuperman is an award-winning freelance journalist based in North Bay, Ontario. Her previous reporting has been published by The Narwhal, Agriculture Dive, and TVO.
Maggie Prince (maggieprince.art) is a Toronto-based illustrator.
