Just over a year ago the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discovered four new species of zooplankton spreading through the sound, released from ballast water brought by tankers from East Asia via San Francisco Bay. In the long run, these zooplankton, feeding on phytoplankton utilized by the Dungeness crab, may change the sound more extensively and permanently that any oil spill. Also, the outbreak of giant snails in Florida or the caulerpa taxifolia clone, an alga taking over the Mediterranean, originated not in ballast, but from aquarium tanks. Each of these sources must be included in our response, policy and research. But at a more immediate level, we must grasp the root of the problem.
Faster crossings let more species survive, reproduce, make connections, and take baggage.
The fall of trade walls brings global exposure to once quiet seaside ports, and vice-versa. In the ballast water of timber cargo ships traveling between Coos Bay, Oregon and Japan, researchers found 367 species of living animals and plants. That's a single route. Larger ports like Norfolk and Baltimore receive more than 12 million metric tons of foreign ballast water per year, originating in 48 different foreign ports, and 90 percent of them carried live organisms, including barnacles, clams, mussels, copepods, diatoms and juvenile fish. Worldwide, tens of thousands of ships carry several thousand species daily.