Status Of International And Domestic Regulations On Installation And Use Of Ballast Water Management Systems

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.