This report summarizes a workshop held during the 23rd Annual Subsistence Memorial Gathering, an event hosted by the Chugach Regional Resources Commission, or CRRC, on March 27, 2025. The workshop was a partnership between the Council, CRRC, and Alaska Sea Grant. The goals of the workshop were to bring together residents of the Chugach and … Read more
Ballast water is globally recognized as a dominant transport vector of nonnative aquatic species, representing a significant threat to the environmental and economic health of coastal areas worldwide. As such, management of ballast water is a longstanding, heavily researched, and evolving field (Bailey et al. 2015). The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has led efforts for decades to control the negative effects of unmanaged ballast water transfer at the international scale. Domestically, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have led similar efforts at the federal level. In recent years, regulations have transitioned toward implementing numeric limits of organism concentration in ballast water discharge based on size class. These limits will primarily be met with the use of shipboard management systems. Following is a brief review of the regulations and guidelines related to the installation and use of ballast water management systems by the IMO and US federal entities, summarized in Table 1.
The ballast water of ships is regulated with an aim to minimize or prevent the introduction of aquatic nonnative species. In the United States, ballast water is regulated at the federal level by the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as by several state programs. Regulations by federal and state agencies are at times overlapping and conflicting.
This report describes ballast water data reported by crude oil tankers arriving to Valdez and Prince William Sound, Alaska, from 2005 through 2015.