Cruise ships

Each cruise ship operator (via their shipping agent) requests access to wharf and harbour facilities up to 18 months in advance. For Akaroa, this involves:

1. Requesting access to Akaroa Harbour from the Harbourmaster’s Office. This is only declined if the Harbourmaster’s Office has navigation safety concerns.
2. Requesting access to the Akaroa wharf from Christchurch City Council. This is declined if the capacity of the wharf is exceeded.

On extremely rare occasions, cruise ship visits have been declined due to wharf access availability.

Cruise ship companies arrange their schedules independently. Each ship has its own itinerary, and these will sometimes double up.

Multi-ship visits to the harbour on the same day may involve a variety of different-sized vessels and are rare in the context of the wider season.

The Harbourmaster’s Office is responsible for ensuring the safety of navigation.

To ensure safe navigation, the Harbourmaster’s Office has a strict set of operating criteria for all ships more than 40m in length.

In addition, all vessels are tracked and recorded remotely as well as by staff on site. Lead lights are provided to guide a ship to the entrance of the harbour. A rigorous safety management system ensures all procedures and requirements are complied with.

Christchurch City Council is responsible for the Akaroa wharf, the public toilet and local parks, rubbish removal, issuing temporary traffic management plans (required when activities vary the normal operations on a road), and managing commercial operators on Council land and facilities.

Christchurch City Council owns and operates the Akaroa wharf. All vessels can still access the wharf during cruise ship visits. They cannot obstruct its use i.e. tie up and wander into town, but they can come alongside to offload or load stores and passengers. All vessel masters should work together to ensure a fair use of the facility for all.

The Harbourmaster’s Office staff member serves a dual role on cruise ship days: Monitoring navigation safety (under a warrant issued by Environment Canterbury under the Maritime Transport Act 1994); and monitoring access to/from the wharf by vessels (under a warrant issued by Christchurch City Council for their Marine, River and Lake Facilities Bylaw 2017).

There’s a general expectation that once the Lyttelton Port has a cruise berth, the number of cruise ships going to Akaroa will decrease.

Yes, emissions from ships are controlled by the Resource Management (Marine Pollution) Regulations 1998, Regional Coastal Plan and Annex VI of the International Marine Pollution regulations.

Environment Canterbury has conducted detailed studies of air quality at Lyttelton and found that air quality is comfortably within World Health Organisation and national guidelines – despite significantly greater shipping, rail, and road traffic than is the case in Akaroa.

Given this, we can be confident there are no issues with air quality in Akaroa from cruise ships.

There have also been recent changes in international regulations which require ships to use low sulphur fuel or to have ‘scrubbers’ which remove certain pollutants from exhaust discharges.

Read the full requirements for ships navigating within the Canterbury region (PDF File, 43.73KB).

We manage noise in Akaroa Harbour as detailed in the Regional Coastal Environmental Plan Rule 8.21(d).
Cruise ships generally anchor in Akaroa Harbour during daylight hours meaning they need to ensure their noise emissions do not exceed 85 dBA at any point on land outside the Coastal Marine Area between 7am and 10pm.
The measurement point applicable for noise sources outside the port areas is the boundary of the Coastal Marine Area. Generally speaking, the boundary of the Coastal Marine Area is approximately the high tide line.

There are a handful of exemptions regarding noise emissions under Rule 8.21(f) of the Regional Coastal Environmental Plan, the most likely to apply to cruise ships include: the normal operation of navigational aids, safety signals, warning devices, including ships sirens, and pressure relief valves.

Ships may disturb the seabed by using their propulsion equipment, thrusters, and anchors. This may produce discoloured water near a ship, similar to the discolouration seen during periods of rough weather. The use of propulsion equipment, thrusters, and anchors is allowed as part of maritime law.

The Resource Management (Marine Pollution) Regulations 1998 applies. Schedule 4, section 15, describes “ship propulsion” as part of the “normal operations” of the ship. Environment Canterbury has discussed this with cruise ship operators and secured agreement that the use of thrusters will continue to be minimised in Akaroa.

We believe anchoring is preferable to the use of thrusters, where possible. Further discussions are underway with cruise ship companies around how they can further minimise their environmental impacts.

In partnership with the Department of Conservation, Christchurch City Council, and ChristchurchNZ, we are reviewing cruise ship activity in Akaroa.