Tasmania’s EPA to monitor cruise ship emissions

Tasmania's Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA) is set to monitor fuel bunker emissions from cruise ships by testing air quality every 10 minutes in port of Hobart, to detect if ships are polluting the air at harmful levels.

According to local media, cruise ships' visits in the Australian island have seen unstoppable rise in recent years and the year to come will see even more traffic, with 138 scheduled visits starting from October 2017.

In view of this, the point of the monitoring for EPA is to see if they can get a signal from the cruise ships and whether they can actually detect the level of sulphur dioxide (SOx) emissions, ensuring that those emissions are within the national standards, EPA's director Wes Ford was quoted as saying.

Hobart City Council Greens Alderman, Helen Burnet, called authorities to go even further and follow Sydney in banning low-grade fuel from being burnt when at port in Hobart.