Saving Seafood

Hey, don’t look at us for critter sneaking into lake, trade group says

November 18, 2016 — SANDUSKY, Ohio — There’s a tiny new creature in Lake Erie that’s not supposed to be there.

And the shipping industry that carries cargo in the Great Lakes says it’s being unfairly blamed for the uninvited guest.

Citing a report from scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, an industry trade group is arguing that it’s unfair to blame freighters for the introduction into western Lake Erie of Thermocyclops crassus, a tiny invertebrate plankton that has been found in western Lake Erie near Toledo.

“The best current evidence does not point to ballast water discharges in the past decade as the most likely reason for the recent discovery of T. crassus,” says a fact sheet issued by the Lake Carriers Association. “However, without any supporting scientific data or research to back their claims, the National Wildlife Federation and the Alliance for the Great Lakes have been quick to blame ballast water, particularly recent discharges from foreign vessels, as the vector of introduction.”

As the Sandusky Register reported on Nov. 2, scientists from Cornell University doing research aboard a U.S. EPA boat announced finding the creature in small numbers. While it’s considered non-native, it’s not known yet whether the creature will reproduce in large numbers and become a nuisance, allowing it to obtain “invasive species” status.

Read the full story at the Sandusky Register

Legislators Consider Changes to Ballast Water Regulations

July 6, 2016 — The following is excerpted from the television program Chicago Tonight, which is hosted by Elizabeth Brackett and aired on WTTW in Chicago:

Elizabeth Brackett: Ocean-going ships that bring their cargo into Great Lakes ports, like the Federal Biscay, unloading foreign steel at the port of Indiana’s Burns Harbor, are regulated by both the U.S. Coast Guard and the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act.

In 2006, the Coast Guard began requiring those ships to dump the ballast water they picked up in foreign ports and pick up sea water.

That ballast water exchange must be made at least 200 nautical miles from land, in water that is 2,000 meters deep to prevent invasive species from being brought in with the new ballast water.

Shippers say those Coast Guard regulations have kept invasive species out of the Great Lakes.

James Weakley, Lake Carriers’ Association: The door was closed in 2006 when the Coast Guard stopped allowing vessels from the ocean to come in with ballast water that wasn’t managed. Not coincidentally, in 2007 the last invasive species was discovered, the bloody red shrimp, in the Great Lakes.

Brackett: Ocean-going vessels that sail the Great Lakes, called Salties, have worked on developing ballast water treatment systems. The Federal Biscay is the first ship on the Great Lakes to bring a ballast water treatment system online. Located in the bowels of the ship over the ballast water tanks, these pumps will push out the old ballast water and bring in the ocean water when the ship is at sea.

Ships, like the 678-foot Wilfred Sykes, that never sail beyond the Great Lakes, are called Lakers.

The Lakers have always been a bit concerned that they’ve gotten blamed for bringing in these invasive species, when you say primarily it’s been the Salties.

Weakley: Actually it’s exclusively been the Salties. We never leave the Great Lakes. Our ships are physically too big to get beyond the Welland Canal so we’ve been in the forefront of calling attention to the problem.

Brackett: Both the Salties and the Lakers agree that the proposed legislation called the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, which would exempt ballast water from the Clean Water Act and put the Coast Guard in charge, is needed.

Weakley: Currently we have a patchwork quilt of regulations, more than two dozen states have requirements on top of the two federal agencies, and what we’re looking to do is have a piece of legislation that has a single national standard with a single federal agency in charge.

Read the full transcript at WTTW