Ballast Water Targeted in Battle Against Exotic Sea Creatures

Huge cranes tower over a ship to unload its cargo from Asia onto waiting trucks at Long Beach harbor. And from a hole in the stern, water spouts into the Pacific.

The water, called ballast, comes from thousands of miles away. It was scooped up off foreign shores to help stabilize the ship for its ocean journey. The problem is that it can contain a stew of alien creatures--crabs, clams, worms, sea squirts, you name it--that would never make it this far on their own.

These invaders arrive every day here at the nation’s busiest harbor and at ports around the country. Once here, they sometimes explode in numbers, crowd out native marine animals, dramatically alter habitats and threaten fisheries.

“This is a problem that’s only getting worse,” said Gretchen Lambert, a University of Washington marine biologist who has documented alien species in waters off California, Washington state, Alaska and Hawaii.

This summer, the U.S. Coast Guard asked ship captains coming from foreign ports to reverse a century-old practice and swap their ballast in the open sea, so that whatever alien critters are stowed away die in the nutrient-poor, salty ocean.

The California Legislature recently passed a bill to make the exchange mandatory. The bill, which would make California the first to require ballast exchange, has been sent to the governor for his signature. This has California ports worried that shipping companies will take their billion-dollar business northward to Oregon and Washington rather than comply.

“It’s a very simple equation for shippers,” said Tim Schott, lobbyist for the California Assn. of Port Authorities. “If the restrictions cost a significant amount of time or money, or if it slows me down because I have to manage my ballast water, I’m going to go to another state.”

Shippers, although trying to work out a compromise, oppose the bill.

“Our concern is that, No. 1, it’s an international issue; No. 2, a national issue,” said Jay Winter of the Los Angeles-based Steamship Assn. of Southern California. “If we end up with a patchwork of laws from every state that has a coastline, it’s going to be a mess and probably not very effective.”

Meanwhile, 40,000 gallons of foreign ballast water slip into the nation’s harbors each minute, according to James Baker, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A cargo ship parked here, the 984-foot Maersk Dorthe, can alone carry up to 22,000 tons of ballast water. It has just arrived from Hong Kong.

Beneath the Maersk Dorthe, 30 to 40 alien species already lurk in San Pedro Bay, which includes the port of Los Angeles, said Bob Kanter, Long Beach port’s director of planning and environmental affairs.

It’s worse up north. The San Francisco Bay-Delta, with its inviting estuary, is now dominated by some 240 exotic species, including the rapidly reproducing Chinese mitten crab. Last fall, workers scooped up some 20,000 of them clinging to the screens used to prevent small fish from getting into irrigation diversions, said Andy Cohen, a marine biologist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute.

“I don’t know, frankly, how to get rid of any of the exotics that have already become established,” Lambert said.

Biologists at UC Santa Barbara, however, recently reported that they have eradicated a microscopic worm from 17 abalone farms and surrounding waters. The worm, discovered in California six years ago, appears to have been unwittingly imported in abalone from South America. The biologists believe this was the first successful eradication of an established, nonnative marine pest.

Chesapeake Bay, home to several ports, is troubled by fewer alien species than San Francisco but has become “the site of the most compelling marine exotic,” said James Carlton, a marine biologist. He called the rapa whelk, an Asian snail the size of a bread loaf, a “kick-butt” species that eats native clams and oysters.

“The last thing we want is a species that eats commercial shellfish. We’re waiting with bated breath to see how abundant they get, and there’s very little we can do to stop it,” he said, speaking from Long Island Sound, where the nation’s largest oyster industry fears the onset of the snail, first discovered last year off New Jersey.

Coast Guard rules, a result of the National Invasive Species Act of 1996, require reports on ballast samples for nearly all vessels entering U.S. waters after voyages from foreign ports.

Based on those reports, the voluntary ballast exchange could become mandatory in another three years, Lt. Cmdr. John Meehan said.

“We’re facing more invasions, there’s no question about it,” said Carlton, who chairs a federal committee on ballast water exchange. “Who wants to gamble?”