A cluster of protestors gathered outside Dunedin's iconic railway station to meet with passengers.

Chalk drawings covered the pavement point out how detrimental the cruise ship industry is to the environment. “Cruise Kills”, one message read. Protesters held up banners and handed out leaflets.

Many of the passengers were set to depart on the tourist train to Pukerangi. A service that had been set aside for the day for the cruise ship. “We support passenger rail as an important form of sustainable transport infrastructure but it is frustrating to see so much money being poured into a service that will never be accessible to many locals and is propping up an industry that is so destructive to our environment.” Said spokesperson Jane Davidson. The train is subsidised by ratepayer money with cruise passengers costing ratepayers $786,000, according to this 2023 article in Otago Daily Times. The railway station itself has also seen recent upgrades costing over 6 million dollars of council money.

Protesters hung a banner from a building opposite, reading “You Cruise, We lose.” This banner has been seen draped around several Dunedin locations in order to draw attention to the harm of cruising. “It’s time we realised that cruise ships are simply not worth the harm they cause,” said Davidson “Four days of cruising burns approximately 1000 tones of Carbon. It is estimated this will cause a death due to climate-related causes by 2100. Any holiday that is killing people cannot be a fun-filled stress free holiday as the cruise ship industry likes to claim.”

Princess cruises lines is one of the most environmentally damaging cruise lines. They were fined US$40 million in 2017 for deliberately dumping oil-contaminated waste from one of its cruise ships, and attempting to cover up its actions so perhaps their silence is not surprising. This is the largest ever criminal penalty for this kind of damage. Climate liberation Aotearoa calls on them to begin to make amends and sign our open letter asking emissions from shipping and aviation to be included in our national emissions reduction targets and plans. There has been no response to this request as of time of publishing.