Biofoul Growth on Cruise Ship Strands Hundreds of Australians

A Viking Cruises ship in a file photograph. Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images

Hundreds of passengers have spent this New Year stranded off the coast of Australia on The Viking Cruise ship, the Orion, which was unable to dock for seven days due to the potentially harmful biofoul growing on its hull.

According to the ship-tracking website, VesselFinder.com, the Orion didn’t dock for a week after it cast off from Wellington, New Zealand on Dec. 26. The ship was reportedly denied docking permission at Christchurch, Dunedin, and Hobart, before setting sail for Adelaide, South Australia.

However, the ship did not reach Adelaide as Australia’s National Maritime Coordination Centre (ANMCC) was notified that there were small amounts of biofoul—marine organisms, plants, small animals, or algae— on its hull.

The Maritime Coordination Centre received notification of the biofoul on Dec. 28, with authorities ordering the agent of the Orion to have the ship’s hull cleaned before entering into Australian waters.

The federal fisheries department told AAP in a statement on Jan. 1 that the cruise ship is required to undergo hull cleaning to remove the biofoul in order to ensure that the ship doesn’t transport potentially harmful marine life into Australian waters.

“Professional divers were engaged directly by the vessel line/agent to clean the hull while at anchor outside Australian waters,” the federal fisheries department said.  “The management of biofoul is a common practice for all arriving international vessels.”

The hull cleaning took place 12 nautical miles (approximately 22 kilometers or 14 miles) off the coast of the South Australian town Victor Harbor.

A cruise ship is docked in Sydney, Australia, on July 13, 2022. Jenny Evans/Getty Images

Expert Explanation of Biofoul

Director of the Flinders University Biofilm Training Centre, Associate Prof. Sophie Leterme said that if biofoul was left unchecked, it could decimate the environment without intervention.

She said that organic build-up on ship hulls, which includes barnacles, bacteria, plankton, sea grasses and mussels, can enable stowaway species to breach Australia’s marine ecosystem and potentially cause harm especially if they are invasive species.

“If they make it to our reefs, they might decimate the environment and cause some serious issues,” Leterme said.

“You don’t want to find a Japanese or French seaweed, for example, taking over the biodiversity of Australian ecosystems.

“With COVID, maybe the companies have not kept up with the requirements as much as they should.”

Cleaning biofoul, particularly on big ships can be expensive, taking a number of days and requiring divers. Leterme said that while it’s not common for cruise ships to encounter docking issues on account of biofoul, she suspects that it’s common for tankers and other vessels.

“I guess it just doesn’t make the news because there’s not that many people involved,” she said.

Australia and New Zealand are comparatively stricter than other countries when it comes to biofouling requirements. The federal agriculture department recently introduced new rules for biofoul management on international vessels arriving in Australia. These new rules tightened the requirements to report biofoul management before entering Australian waters.

Cruise Offering Rebates to Passengers

The hull of the Orion has now been cleaned and the vessel docked in Melbourne on Jan. 2 with the ship resuming its route to Sydney. However, a representative for the cruise company noted that the required cleaning has caused the ship to miss several stops along its route.

“A limited amount of standard marine growth is being cleaned from the ship’s hull—a standard cleaning procedure for nautical vessels,” they told AAP in a statement on Sunday.

“Viking is working directly with guests on compensation for the impact to their voyage.”

The Ship’s Master, Marko Snajdar, wrote a letter of apology for the situation to the passengers on Dec.30.

“We acknowledge that the current cruise falls short of your expectations,” Snajdar wrote.

“Immediately upon your return, a member of our Customer Relations team will contact you with an adjusted offer of compensation.

“Viking is interested in keeping you as lifetime travellers, and we hope to see you under less exceptional circumstances on one of our ships in the future.”

Environmental Impact of Cruise Ships

The transportation of invasive species is not the only danger that cruise ships pose to Australia’s marine environment. These ships produce large amounts of waste, leak toxic metals and chemicals into the water, interfere with marine life through noise and collision, and emit high amounts of CO2, nitrogen, and sulphur oxides.

Another issue with some cruise lines is the illegal dumping of waste. In 2017 Princess Cruise Lines, owned by the cruise company Carnival, sustained a five-year probation, as well as a $40 million penalty, after pleading guilty to “seven felony charges stemming from its deliberate pollution of the seas and intentional acts to cover it up.”

Following this conviction, in 2019, Princess was again convicted, this time of six probation violations, copping a $20 million fine, and in 2022 they pleaded guilty to a second revocation, for which they received a $1 million fine.