Tidewater Inc.

Pan-American Life Center 601 Poydras Street, Suite 1900 New Orleans, Louisiana 70130-6040 Telephone: (504) 568-1010 

# Tidewater

03 December 2009 Docket Management Facility U.S. Department of Transportation West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE. Washington DC 20590

Reference: USCG-2001-10486

Subject: Standards for Living Organisms in Ships’ Ballast Water Discharged

in U.S. Waters

Tidewater Inc., through its various subsid iaries, provides offshore supply vessels (OSVs) and marine support services to the offshore energy industry with the world’s largest fleet of offshore marine service vesse ls. The company was incorporated in 1956. With a fleet of 430 vessels at 31 March 2009, the company operates in most of the world’s significant oil and gas exploration a nd production markets and provides services supporting all phases of offshore explorat ion, development and production, including: towing of and anchor handling of mobile drilling rigs and equipment; transporting supplies and industrial personnel necessary to sustain drilling, workover and production activities; assisting in o ffshore construction activities; and a variety of specialized services including pipe laying, ca ble laying and 3-D seismic work.

While we applaud the direction of USCG in seeking to protect domestic waters from the harm caused by certain invasive species, it should be pointed out t hat the international model, IMO Ballast Water Management Conv ention takes its cue from the IMO’s mandate to suggest regulations palatable to Flag Administrati ons while placing the bulk of the burden on vessel owners. We respectfullysubmit that that a pproach is limited,

because of its mandate so it cannot face the issue squarely. We submit that, in order to fulfill the mission tasking laid out by the legi slature; a more logical and focused scheme is called for. The apparent simplicity ofproposed equipment requirement plan, we submit, overlooks the variety of ve ssel types and their operating modes.

The Problem:

Any discussion of invasive species and their associated introduction vectors into U.S. domestic waters should necessarily encompass the whole issue lest over simplification leads to unintended consequences.

Additionally an appraisal of our domesti c waters needs to acknowledge regional characteristics and histories. Examples of this have already been made in oral comments in the hearings; one being the notion that the waters of the Mississippi and her tributaries eventually flow past New Orl eans. We would add that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico themselves conspire to defy the proposed rule by vi rtue of their circular currents through the 7 th District Zones into the 8 th and then from Sector Mobile’s zone through the intermediate COTP zones all the way to Sector Corpus Christi. TheUSCG-2001-10486 Docket Tide water, Inc. Comments

December 2009 Page 2 of 4 longshore littoral transport alone is indicative of this water move ment from the white sand beaches of the Upper Flor ida Gulf Coast into the big muddy’s effluent plume until the larger sediment has settled by the Matagorda Bay area and then the cleaner
beaches of South Padre island. We have pointed before to the cyclical breeding patterns of the aquatic species which breed in shore and live offshore, they too would tend to carry any parasitic species inshore, which, we submit, is reason enough to consider the Gulf of Mexico a single “zone” for the purposes of future ballast water regulation.

By the same token, we are concerned about mid-ocean ballast water exchange in the Gulf of Mexico, we submit logically a Ca ribbean Control Area be established to prohibit these exchanges in the Gulf and Caribbean (which may already have been created in a de facto sense, since there may not be areas beyond 200 NM of land). We believe that sea lanes in general are restricted by great ci rcle transit routes; this tends to make certain areas common for the deep sea traders’ mid-ocean exchange practices. While we believe that organism dis persal is probably below viable thresholds, we submit that the current trend for the tonnage of deep sea vessels to incrementally increase is likely

to lead to increases of these concentrations.

During the presentation at the recent public hearing in Ne w Orleans, the brief coverage of the Great Lakes invasion by Zebra Mussels mentioned in passing that this species was found to be filling an apparently empty ec ological niche in the Great Lakes ecosystem. We wonder how many opportunistic species are currently filling niches left vacant either from a water body’s previouslypolluted state (with th e resultant lost of native species) or whether a particular nic he had never previously been filled. This poses the question whether a maritime defens e against a given invasive species is

even viable with a vulnerable ecosystem since without a heal thy ecosystem there would be no competing species or predat ors. We submit that in a vulnerable ecosystem there would be additional damage if, for example, de-oxygenated waters were continually added, particularly in large volume to the body ofwater. In our opinion this is the likely result of BWMS treated waters being dumped, by current and future deep sea large tonnage vessels, into port areas. While we have not researched the matter; logically it would appear that if each port maintained the means to segregate ballast waters arriving from foreign routes, those waters could be used to make up trim for those vessels departing for foreign voyages. Per haps this could be effected by means of shoreside tank farms piped to the docks or via dedicated tank barges. As an aside,

creation of these sorts of port services seems in line wi th the current administration’s desire to provide environment ally desirable opportunities.

At issue, as we see it is that while every vessel may be seen as a viable vector for invasive species transportation, this proposed regulation seeks to control ballast water for all commercial vessels as though they were deep sea traders; even though most of the hulls are on simple coastal or inland rout es. In several separate respects is this logic suspect; first, as noted the regulations should be targeted at ballast water arriving on voyages from differing eco-systems that is actually taken, untreated from those waters. While this aspect of the rulemaking c oncerns itself directly with standards, it is apparent that the standards are a moving target; some of this is obvious with respect to

the solicitation based on the in creasingly, over time, rigor ousness of the two stated standards. What is not mentioned though is that the standards ar e based upon living organisms; not dormant or otherwise spore-like phases of mari ne life. We submit that this aspect is the more troubling from the standpoint of ballast water treatment deviceUSCG-2001-10486 Docket Tide water, Inc. Comments

December 2009 Page 3 of 4 standards, since destruction of those phases may well be impracticable at present without actually distilling ballast water. Even so any residue may we ll have to be treated

as toxic waste on board or incinerated.

Notwithstanding that approved devices have yet to be deployed, others have pointed out and we join with them in suggesting that the financial projections in the rule do not

reflect what we understand will be the true cost s of this proposal. It may be alarmist, but true in our opinion, to suggest that t he U.S. commercial maritime presence worldwide is likely to fall further behind hertrading partners if this proposed method of addressing invasive species proceeds without radical modification.

Applicability of the Proposed Rules to Offshore Support Vessels

Since OSVs typically carry municipal water in their ballast tanks, except in unusual situations primarily as a result of mainta ining stability in heavy weather operation, we submit that OSVs in routine operation s hould be exempted from the requirement to carry BWMS. In the case of those evolutio ns that do require taking on ballast water from the sea, we propose t hat those waters be transferred to shoreside treatment facilities since the tanks will need cleaning prior to accepting municipal water for offshore facilities. Furthermore, they gener ally operate in coastal waters within 200 nautical miles of shore posing little threat of encountering invasive species not already
in U.S. waters.

The original ballast water rulemaking was not focused on or targeted at the offshore support vessel industry and so, not surprisingl y; the unique aspects of those vessels’ operations were not considered in the writing of the rule. To its credit, once the Coast Guard understood the impac t of the regulations on the i ndustry, it produced Navigation Vessel Inspection Circular (NVIC) 07-04 C hange 1, which mitigated the negative impact of that rulemaking on the industry.

We note that coastwise Oil Tankers are ex empted from the carriage requirement by legislation and we submit that OSV routes in oil field service are less prone to the acquisition of foreign invasive specie s than those of coastwise tankers.

Summary

Clearly, regulations related to invasive s pecies must be shown to be effective in addressing the problem. The Office of Mana gement and Budget has m ade it clear that agencies must review regulations to determi ne whether they address issues in a costeffective way. We submit that narrowing t he focus to vessels actually using foreign ballast water would be more likely to result in reduction of importation of invasive species via maritime transport vectors.

We also strongly recommend that port treat ment storage and treatment services and facilities should be investigated as a more co st effective method of defending our ecosystems. It should also be pointed out that such infrastructures could use ‘greener’ sources of invasive species eradication than is available on board sea-going vessels; this may well be an issue, air pollution-wis e, particularly in west coast ports.

We understand that Coast Guard has a narrow focus in this proposed rule however we feel unable to directly address the posed qu estions of standards and timeline since the context of the application of these standards is, we belie ve, unrealistic. We have attempted to make rational suggestions for a ddressing this issue both in this comment and in previous submissions to Coast Guard and EPA dockets. We stand ready toUSCG-2001-10486 Docket Tide water, Inc. Comments

December 2009 Page 4 of 4 participate in future discussions on this s ubject as events permit. Tidewater appreciates the opportunity to submit comments on this matter.

Sincerely,

Mark Sales Regulatory & Systems Engineer Tidewater Marine, L.L.C.