Ships worldwide transport over 10 billion tonnes of ballast water every year and by doing so inadvertently bring small plants and animals from one port to another, when they load and unload the water. Running the risk of ecological disaster via invasive species.
This is is why the International Maritime Organization decided vessels need to install ballast water management systems – to clean and treat the water before it is loaded into the ballast tanks. This way when the ship reaches its next port and needs to dump the water in its ballast tanks overboard, it won’t introduce any invasive species into a new ecosystem.
The following infographic shows the top ten invasive marine species that were transported by international shipping and the impacts they had.
Filtersafe is proud to be a leader in the movement to end the spread of invasive species and to protect our marine resources.
