Instead, individual states, including Washington and Oregon, are enacting their own regulations to try to prevent ecological catastrophes in their states. The West Coast is under siege from the Chinese mitten crab, for example.
Ships carry ballast water to keep the ship stable when it's empty.
And there are no uniform discharge standards or treatments for ballast water. That surely must be remedied if there's to be any hope of coping with these infestations. Washington state has enacted regulations that require treatment of ballast water by July 2002, though technology to do it is still not full developed. Among the possibilities is filtration of the ballast water to remove bigger organisms and ultraviolet radiation to eliminate bacteria. If that's a sensible approach, it ought to be a uniform requirement for all shippers to avoid confusion.