Invasive Species in Ballast Water? Nuke 'Em. : Shifting Baselines

The Shifting Baselines Blog

Jennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses.
Josh Donlan is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.

Scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olson, founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project is also a blog contributor.

Search

Online Resources and Blogs

New Projects & Publications

November 2008 Jennifer Jacquet is lead author of the study In hot soup: sharks captured in Ecuador's waters published in Environmental Sciences.

November 27, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Why Consumers Alone Can't Save Our Fish" at 1pm at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

August 2008: Josh Donlan is co-author on a new paper titled Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles published in Biological Invasions.

August 2008: Jennifer Jacquet is co-author on a new paper titled Funding Priorities: Big Barriers to Small-Scale Fisheries published in Conservation Biology.

August 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Journal of Applied Ecology titled Diversity, invasive species, and extinctions in insular ecosystems.

July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.

July 24, 2008: Josh Donlan gives a talk on biodiversity offsets to The Alcoa Foundation and the Alcao Intalco Aluminum Plant in Bellingham, Washington.

July 22, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "A Way Forward in a Sea of Market Based Initiatives to Save Wild Fish" at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.

July 19, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the West Coast at Outfest in Hollywood, CA.

July 17, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "In Hot Soup: Shark's Captured in Ecuador's Waters" at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, TN.

July 9, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Flawed Data, Reef Fisheries, And Food Security: A Close Inspection Of Marine Fisheries Catches in Mozambique, Tanzania, Fiji, And The Solomon Islands" at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

June/July 2008: Josh Donlan attends training for his Kinship Conservation Fellowship in Bellingham, WA.

May 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Ambio titled High impact Conservation: Invasive Mammal Eradications from the Islands of Western Mexico.

May 15, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet reviews Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood at the Tyee.

April 2008: Trade Secrets: Renaming and Mislabeling of Seafood by Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly is published in Marine Policy.

April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound:.

Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.

Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card

« First Ever Observation of a Right Whale Birth! | Main | Will the Future Be Fishless? »

Invasive Species in Ballast Water? Nuke 'Em.

Posted on: May 12, 2008 8:07 AM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet

On any given day, the world's fleet of ships are carrying billions of tons of ballast water with up to 7,000 different invasive species as stowaways. About one in every ten of these is likely to be a problem if it's introduced into a new ecosystem, which is why the United Nations has listed "invasive species" discharged from ballast water as one of the top four threats to marine ecosystems globally. In the Mediterranean Sea, for instance, a new species has been recorded every four weeks. More than 400 introduced species now make their home in a Sea that has (or had) one of the highest percentages of endemic species in the world.

But this sad story now has a proposed technological, fairytale ending. According to the BBC, a team of researchers has showed that installing continuous microwave systems onboard cargo ships could heat up and kill all marine life within the water tanks. Read more about that idea here.

On the other hand, we could simply require that boats dump their ballast water in the open ocean rather than in sensitive bays and estuaries (a solution that has been proposed for years). But that's just not nearly as fun as nuking 'em, is it?

Find more posts in: Environment

Comments

Doesn't look the article is available yet so it's hard to say if the idea is not just technically feasible but also economically viable.

Posted by: kevindwhite | May 12, 2008 7:41 PM

And I'm wrong, the article is available at http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/asap/abs/es7024752.html

Posted by: kevindwhite | May 12, 2008 7:48 PM

Possibly a health and safety issue here in Tampa Bay. While sampling, FWC Fisheries apparently found 2 box jellyfish about 1/3 the way into Tampa bay. A bay that many people get wet in. A bay that has suitable conditions for jellyfish to thrive.

Posted by: canucklehead | May 20, 2008 11:57 AM

Let's see, 20,000 tons of ballast water, with a power input from microwaves at 2.5 kilowatts/liter/minute, and you have three quarters of a gigawatt hour of electrical energy used.

No, it's not going to happen THIS way.

Posted by: Dan L | April 15, 2009 3:41 PM