New efforts to combat invasive species
Tiny ocean critters can wreck new neighborhood
By Marsha Walton
CNN
(CNN) -- The U.S. Coast Guard will soon begin enforcing new regulations to try to prevent ships from around the world from delivering unwanted and sometimes destructive cargo.
It's not weapons or hazardous materials, but invasive species they want to stop. These tiny hitchhikers can wreak havoc on a port's ecosystem.
The International Maritime Organization estimates 7,000 different species get transported in cargo ship ballast water every day.
About 80 percent of the world's commercial goods are transported by ships. The United Nations says three factors -- faster ships, warmer seas and more trade -- are increasing the possibility that these non-native species can damage new territory.
"Coming into a new area, this organism doesn't have any real enemies; the defenses of the local population are not up," said Linda Farmer, an oceanographer at the University of Miami.
"And so the organism can become established, can compete with the local population, can cause the collapse of the food chain."
If a home port is similar in temperature and water quality to a new port, says Farmer, the chances of a hitchhiker thriving in the new home are higher. Most of these creatures are quite small; from less than a micron in diameter to a few centimeters.
Ballast water keeps ships stable when there's no cargo on board.
But when the water is dumped, so are the millions of creatures living in it.
Probably best known among the globe-trotting invaders is the zebra mussel. Native to Eastern Europe, the organism was introduced by Russian vessels to the U.S. Great Lakes in 1986. By 1988, the species had spread to lakes and waterways in 19 states. Zebra mussels have caused billions in damage by clogging water intake pipes at factories and power plants and by interrupting the food chain.
Another devastating invader species traveled in the opposite direction.
The American comb jellyfish, just a few centimeters long, was transported thousands of miles from the Chesapeake Bay to the Black Sea and then to the Caspian Sea. With no natural enemies there, the creature caused the collapse of anchovy fisheries.
The new regulations are being implemented because many years of voluntary guidelines for ballast water management simply did not work.
"We certainly didn't get as good a result on voluntary regulations as we would like to have seen; we decided that the national mandatory regulations were needed," said Rear Adm. Thomas Gilmour, assistant commandant for Marine Safety, Security and Environmental Protection for the U.S. Coast Guard.
Gilmour said a voluntary code had a 30 percent compliance rate, in part because more than 90 percent of vessels entering U.S. ports are foreign-flagged.
The new requirements are mandatory for all vessels equipped with ballast water tanks that enter or operate within U.S. waters.
"They either exchange their water in the open ocean to ensure that they get high salinity water in their ballast tanks to destroy as many species as possible or that they carry no ballast or that they retain the ballast that they have on board," Gilmour said.
The regulations establish penalties for ships that fail to submit a ballast water management report. Gilmour said the new regulations will be added to the environmental rules that Coast Guard officers currently inspect for and enforce. Penalties can be as high as $27,500.
Controlling the spread of non-native species is one of several research projects Farmer and her students conduct in part, in the floating laboratories aboard the cruise ship Explorer of the Seas.
The University of Miami and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines created atmospheric and oceanographic labs on board, enabling them to collect data year round. The researchers monitor populations of bacteria, phytoplankton and zooplankton both near shore and in offshore waters.
"We are looking at a number of treatment possibilities: filtration, ultracentrifuge, which is a big centrifuge to spill out the organisms, ozone and chlorine treatment," Farmer said.
Some global shipping companies are also working with oceanographers to develop other possible ballast water treatment systems.
And individual ports are contemplating even more stringent ballast water controls of their own. Several states bordering the Great Lakes have lobbied for stricter enforcement. The Coast Guard says the environment, food supply, economy, health and overall biodiversity can all be affected by non-indigenous species.
"San Francisco Bay has been hit hard by organisms hitchhiking from across the Pacific," Farmer said. "They're talking about setting up very stringent rules for San Francisco Bay. If a ship has to change its whole operation to go into San Francisco Bay, it's going to reflect on the economy of the shipping line."
