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Cruise Ships Return to Australia after COVID Ban

The Pacific Explorer made a dramatic entrance with a large banner that read "We're home" draped across its bow. AFP
The Pacific Explorer made a dramatic entrance with a large banner that read "We're home" draped across its bow. AFP
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Cruise Ships Return to Australia after COVID Ban

The Pacific Explorer made a dramatic entrance with a large banner that read "We're home" draped across its bow. AFP
The Pacific Explorer made a dramatic entrance with a large banner that read "We're home" draped across its bow. AFP

A cruise ship docked in Sydney Harbor on Monday for the first time in more than two years, after a 2020 ban sparked by a mass COVID-19 outbreak was lifted.

On a bright morning, the Pacific Explorer made a dramatic entrance, flanked by tugboats spraying plumes of water and with a large banner that read "We're home" draped across its bow.

Crowds gathered at the base of the Sydney Harbor Bridge to watch the arrival of the ship, which began its 18,000-kilometer (11,000-mile) journey back to Australia nearly a month ago, AFP reported.

International cruise ships were banned from Australian waters in March 2020 after a COVID-19 outbreak that spread from the Ruby Princess ship, which was linked to hundreds of cases of the virus and 28 deaths, many in aged care homes.

The Pacific Explorer and two other cruise ships owned by P&O were moored off the coast of Cyprus for much of the past year waiting for Australia to lift its ban -- a reprieve delayed by successive waves of COVID-19.

Bookings for P&O's Australian cruises are now close to pre-pandemic levels, spokesperson Lyndsey Gordon told AFP.

"We now see the prospect of near normal summer cruise season for 22-23."

Before the pandemic, some 350 cruise ships travelled to Australia carrying more than 600,000 passengers -- making the industry worth Aus$5.2 billion (US$3.8 billion) to the national economy, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.

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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File

The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago.

Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species

The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing

Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle.

Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed.

"We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said.

Asia main producer
Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023.

"For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said.

At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly.

"It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said.

He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource".

Seaweed

Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production.

Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said.

He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants.

"And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.