In the early 1980s, a group of North American comb jellyfish quit their Atlantic home, hid away in the belly of a cargo ship and headed for the Black Sea.
By just over a decade later, their descendants had decimated the anchovy population in their new surroundings — a jellyfish heaven with unlimited food in the eggs and young of other fish and not a natural predator in sight.
Invasive hitchhiker species constitute “one of the most significant threats to the marine environment in modern times,” International Maritime Organization (IMO) head Koji Sekimizu says.
Sometimes microscopic in size yet devastating in impact, these organisms can swiftly colonize new marine habitats, wrecking ecosystems on which humans also depend. Yet 10 years after the world agreed on a key tool for dealing with the problem, the organization’s Convention on the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments has not been ratified by enough seafaring countries to enter into force.
It must be adopted by at least 30 countries representing no less than 35 percent of global merchant tonnage. So far 40 nations, notably excluding seafaring giants China, Greece and Panama, have ratified the mechanism, but they represent just over 30 percent of tonnage.
The convention would be “a powerful legal instrument,” Sekimizu said, with measures including mandatory onboard ballast water treatment facilities.
According to green group WWF, more than 10 billion tonnes of water are moved around the world in ballast tanks every year.
In this manner, about 7,000 species of fish, crustaceans, algae, invertebrates and even viruses and bacteria, travel unnoticed across the world’s oceans every day.
The intruders can wreak havoc with fisheries, aquaculture and water supply — affecting large industry, but also local communities that rely on marine ecosystems.
Many species flourish in a new environment, “in the absence of population-regulating factors that existed in their natural home,” said Daniel Masson of the French sea research institute Ifremer. This could include disease-causing germs, predators or parasites.
The WWF has appealed for widespread ratification of the convention, saying invasive species inflict a “potentially devastating impact on ecology and economy in areas where they do not belong.”
Part of the problem has been the money and time it would cost shipowners to filter out and kill invasive species in ballast water.
“It is an agreement that costs,” said Damien Chevallier, head of the French-based office for shipping regulation and safety evaluation. “It represents an additional cost of about a million euros [US$1.26 million] per ship,” he said.
The WWF says the cost of doing nothing will be much higher, for biodiversity and people whose livelihoods depend on the sea.
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