Excessive Fumes From Cruise Ship Sparks Investigation
On April 10, 2025, while docked in Lyttelton, New Zealand, the 129,500 gross ton Celebrity Edge emitted a cloud of fumes that was alarming to locals.
Home to just 2,859 residents, the small port town enjoys the economic boost from the rise of cruise tourism in the area.
In February 2011, a powerful earthquake in neighboring Canterbury caused significant damage to Lyttelton Harbour, making it unable to berth cruise ships.
However, the country’s first-ever purpose-built cruise ship berth was opened here in November 2020, and now hosts vessels such as the 2,908 passenger Celebrity Edge.
According to local news reports, the area’s environmental authorities, Environment Canterbury (ECan), received many calls from the public about an alarming amount of exhaust coming from the docked ship.
A spokesperson from ECan shared that they were closely monitoring the situation and working closely with Maritime NZ, an organization that is in charge of preventing air pollution from vessels.
The Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) also directly contacted Celebrity Edge after concerns were raised by the locals.
An LPC spokesperson confirmed that the ship has a closed-loop exhaust cleaning system, which neutralizes smoke pollutants before they are emitted back out into the open.
Still, LPC is choosing to monitor the air emissions around the port, focusing on particle matter, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides.
Once the monitoring process is complete, results will be shared with the community. There is no timeline on when that information will be released yet, but if the closed-loop exhaust cleaning system did its job, chances are the results will be no cause for alarm.
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One of the concerned residents Zoë Brock took to social media to share her thoughts on the situation, emphasizing that even if it might just appear to be steam it could be affecting people’s health.
“If these ships are going to continue to come here, one solution is to force them to plug in – as they do in many places like Vancouver, LA, Brooklyn, San Diego, Seattle, and even Miami,” Brock added, trying to seek out a solution.
Lyttelton Harbour does not currently have shore power capabilities, so unfortunately, this would not be a solution unless the port decided to add this sustainable feature.
Celebrity Edge is currently on a 12-night round-trip cruise out of Sydney, Australia — and is currently underway to its fourth stop in Tauranga where it will arrive on April 12, 2025.
Other than Lyttelton, there have also already been stops in Dunedin and Fiordland National Park. The vessel will also call on ports in Auckland and the Bay of Islands before returning to Sydney on April 17.
The good news for this small town is that the next ship set to arrive in Lyttelton will be Carnival Splendor in October 2025, so they will not be seeing more cruise or emission issues for some time.
The Smoke Strikes Again
What do Celebrity Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line have in common? They both had ships with heavy smoke emissions in 2025!
On February 26, 2025, the 4,200 passenger Norwegian Epic was spotted emitting a huge plume of white smoke while docked in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.
Similar to Lyttelton Harbour, the Tortola Cruise Port does not have shore power capabilities — meaning that ships have to rely on their own onboard power systems to produce the electricity necessary to operate.
Cruise Ships Docked in Tortola (Credit: Environmental Health
Ministry)
Due to this process, generators emit steam and smoke, but most modern cruise ships have scrubbers to help reduce emissions of harmful chemicals, as mentioned above.
Norwegian Epic, just like Celebrity Edge, has these scrubbers so that they comply with the standards put in place by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
The Environmental Health Division (EHD) evaluated the emissions in Tortola and concluded that no harmful chemicals were being released.
Chances are that, given both ships use the same scrubbing system, the results from the testing done in Lyttelton will come back similar to the final report from the EHD in Tortola.