**3. Understanding the dangers of discharging untreated ballast water**

It is important to note that a safe ship has to maintain balance by having water pumped into its ballast tanks. This gives the vessel stability as the weight of the vessel and its displacement in the water have to be carefully managed throughout the voyage which is all part of vessel stability. It has been said that water-based ballast systems and ship ballasting increased with the advent of steel-hulled ships [17]. Ships with ballast water systems are not only those that engage in the carriage of goods, for example, the dredger, ILembe, a Hopper Dredger flying under the South African flag, registered under IMO number 9741891 has a ballast water system which pumps in or out ballast water depending on how much sand and other by-products of dredging are taken on board the vessel. To keep the dredger from transporting invasive species around the coastline upon which it operates, the dredger's operations in law require that it exchanges its ballast water with local water before it gets into the new coastal waters [18]. This example shows us that ballasting may affect and type and size of vessel and the introduction of foreign waters is something that must as a result be managed carefully.

In international trade, **Figure 1** below shows us that ballast water discharge into the environment as shown in the illustration, in this case, it introduces invasive species into a new environment if such ballast water being discharged is not sufficiently

#### **Figure 1.**

*Ballast water management and its implications (Miami shark research, 2016).*

### *Ballast Water Utopia and Some Environmental Protection Ideas DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107897*

treated [19]. This discharge of ballast water is part of ensuring that the vessel can load cargo at the port of loading in a safe manner such that the illustration shows how the water is replaced by the cargo and vice versa. In trade, a cargo empty vessel is ballasted by water and a fully cargo-loaded vessel is ballasted by a combination of cargo and the appropriate amount of water as the operations of the vessel require. On board are sensitive ballast water systems fitted with alarms and are carefully monitored by the captain and his or her crew who give the appropriate instructions for what is considered the appropriate levels of ballasting is needed for each unique situation.

It has been established by the scientific community that ship ballasting seems to work best with water and that coming up with a technology of ballast-less ships is probably a pipe dream because the current methods are safer, economical, and have shown ship construction soundness [20]. Unfortunately, the science of avoiding invasive species from entering new worlds with shipping as a vector moved along at a slower pace when compared with just how many invasive species were historically and more recently being introduced around the world.

Untreated ballast water can introduce not only dangerous robust nonindigenous species to a new environment, but these species tend to cause economic and environmental harm by creating self-sustaining, dominant populations that disrupt the indigenous environment. Some invasive species demonstrate *allelopathy*, a condition that allows invasive species to produce chemicals that inhibit the growth of other organisms, particularly in plants, and this is of particular importance in cases of seaweed invasions. This means that billions in financial losses occur in fishing and other aquaculture sites as a result of ships with untreated ballast water bringing in parasites, viral and bacterial pathogens that may cause cholera and other cysts of toxic dinoflagellates which can be poisonous [21]. The IMO's GloBallast [22] initiative which recorded this negative phenomenon around the world also keeps records of invasions by country as a public record. This report contains alarming data which is why the BWM 2004 Convention was eventually prepared and published as is now in force. This is also the reason, the author ran a survey to find out what industry attitudes were concerning readiness to deal with untreated ballast water and to ask those within the industry if they have thought of methods not only to manage new ballast water invasions but in future hopefully deal with current invasions with an aim to reduce them significantly with the hope of reviving damaged ecosystems and other affected fishing businesses, etc.

Here are the general findings of that survey which shows that the industry leaders in this sector have not only understood the dangers of ignoring ballast water management but are keen to turn to technologies and other methods to manage ballast water AIS.

