#25 with Steve Raaymakers

Ballast water, carried in ships when they have little or no cargo, is responsible for the introduction of many exotic marine pests

In undertaking my research, I investigated regulatory and management responses to the threat of marine species introductions via shipping at four levels: global, regional, national and local. The global study focused primarily on the ballast water regulatory regime currently being developed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The regional case study focused on two areas, the Baltic Sea and the American-Pacific north west. The national case study considered the comprehensive regime being developed by the United States Federal Government and the local case study looked at the Port of Valdez in Alaska. As a result of this study, the following recommendations were made to the Australian minerals and energy export industries (the industry):

• Industry should lead, rather than be led, by government, especially in relation to environmental and regulatory matters. The industry should therefore become far more involved in addressing this issue than it currently is in Australia. Such increased involvement would include adoption and implementation of the recommendations below.

• The industry should ensure continued broad representation on all levels that deal with the ballast water issue, including the Australian Ballast Water Management Advisory Council (ABWMAC) and the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the IMO.

• The industry should strongly support the Australian Government in its push to secure a standardised, international regulatory regime for ballast water through IMO/MARPOL 73/78, and ensure that all ships serving the industry begin to comply with MARPOL 73/78 provisions as soon as possible, not waiting for them to come into force.

• The industry should extend its consideration of biological introductions to sources in addition to ships' ballast water, including hull fouling and fouling on offshore structures that may be moved between areas (e.g. oil exploration and production infrastructure).

• If the 'optional mandatory' formula for ratification of the ballast water Annex of MARPOL 73/78 is not accepted by IMO, the industry should work to accelerate the introduction of Australian legislation ahead of the IMO timeframe.

• Given the limitations associated with re-ballasting/ballast exchange at sea, the industry should develop and fund a concerted, comprehensive strategic research and development effort that is focused purely on developing the ultimate, practical engineering solution to this problem. An industry-led solution will significantly reduce the need and push for regulatory approaches, and would be the most likely to succeed. Given the size of the global shipping fleet, development of the ultimate solution to the ballast water problem could prove commercially lucrative for the developer.

• Such a research and development program should be complimentary to and coordinated with research carried out by other parties, including government, academia and overseas parties.

• The industry should ensure that all contracts between member companies and shipping companies include legal requirements for all ships to comply with the Australian Ballast Water Management Strategy*.

• The industry should ensure that at least a first-port semi-quantitative ballast water risk assessment is conducted for each bulk mineral and energy export port in the country (e.g. as per Hilliard and Raaymakers 1997).

• The industry should develop a program to ensure that all bulk mineral and energy export ports in the country are systematically surveyed for the presence/absence of introduced marine species, according to port survey protocols developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's Centre for Research on Introduced Marine Pests (CRIMP).

• The industry should develop a program to ensure that all bulk mineral and energy export ports in the country have a port-specific ballast water management plan, which complies with the general requirements of the Australian Ballast Water Management Strategy.

• The industry should thoroughly investigate the risks and possible impacts of foreign marine species introductions during the environmental impact assessment of all proposed new export facilities, and should not proceed with such developments should the risks and potential impacts be deemed too great.

• The industry should thoroughly investigate the potential incorporation of ballast water treatment facilities during the design of all proposed new export facilities.

• The industry should spearhead the development of a regional approach to marine biological introductions with Australia's immediate northern neighbours.

• The industry should consider conducting an assessment of ballast water management initiatives in relevant South American countries, for comparison with Australian bulk export ports, given various similarities between the two areas.

• The industry should investigate potential options for obtaining protection against possible legal action and compensation claims should an introduction be shown to have occurred via a particular bulk export port, and should minimise the risk of such an occurrence by adopting the recommendations above.

It also contains a list of major ship groundings that have occurred in the region in recent years, and contact details for resource personnel with expertise in this area. Ship groundings are a significant environmental concern for the Pacific islands, which are heavily reliant on their coastal and marine environments for both subsistence and commercial fishing. The relatively small size of many Pacific islands combined with the importance of their coastal and marine environments, means that they are particularly vulnerable to even small pollution incidents.

Coastlines and reefs in the region are literally littered with shipwrecks, many of which are foreign-owned fishing vessels, and many of which are simply abandoned by their owners with no clean-up or salvage responsibility. The list of incidents contained in the manual indicates that there have been over 160 groundings of ships larger than 100 'gross registered tonnes' in the region since 1976. These data are derived from Lloyds Maritime Information Service Casualty Register. There are many more incidents that have occurred that are not on this database.

Most Pacific island countries have limited capacity to respond to such incidents, with the high costs of salvage and clean-up being a major limiting factor when owners are often difficult to identify for cost recovery.

The manual was written by environmental and maritime consultants on contract to SPREP. It represents a useful tool that can be used to improve responses to ship groundings. The manual includes guidelines on environmental issues, crew safety, vessel salvage, legal, insurance and compensation issues. For further information contact me at SPREP through the channels listed overleaf.

During the 1980s and until 1992, SPREP, in conjunction with the IMO and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), and AMSA's predecessor, the Australian Department of Transport and Communications, held biannual workshops in both Fiji and Australia to train personnel from Pacific island countries in marine spill response. No such workshops have been held since 1992. Apart from in-house oil industry activity, training in this important area has been largely absent in the region over the last six years.

In 1998, SPREP, with support from the Commonwealth Secretariat and Canada, commenced development of PACPOL, the Pacific Ocean Pollution Prevention Programme. PACPOL is a comprehensive initiative to address all forms of shipping-related pollution throughout the Pacific islands region. An important project under PACPOL is the resurrection of regional training in marine spill response. PACPOL Project MS 3: Annual Workshops on Marine Spill Response, provides for the holding of a five-day training workshop within the region every year for five years from 1998.

Seed funding for the workshops has been provided by the IMO under its Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme (ITCP), representing ITCP Project H03 RAS/97/309. Support has also been committed, although not yet secured (July 1998), by Australia through AMSA.

The first of the new workshop series is to be held in Suva, Fiji from 30 November to 4 December 1998. It is intended that the venue for the workshops will be rotated throughout the region in each subsequent year.

Previous spill response workshops in the region have tended to focus exclusively on oil pollution. There is increasing recognition internationally that it is more effective and efficient to integrate oil spill response arrangements with those for all hazardous substances.

The workshop will therefore cover the response to spills of all forms of hazardous substances. However, it will retain a focus on oil spills, as oil is the main hazardous substance carried by shipping in the region.

The workshop will cover spills into the marine environment from all sources, including both shipping and shore-based facilities.

The workshop is designed to target middle-management personnel from government environmental and maritime agencies and the oil industry, who would play key roles in the response to marine spills within their respective countries. It is designed to provide a general but reasonably detailed overview of all aspects of the response to marine spills, and provide the participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to develop effective marine spill response arrangements within their countries.

Due to limits on resources and limits on the capacity of small island countries to absorb multiple training activities, it is not proposed to provide detailed training in specialist areas (e.g. first level responder, environmental and scientific support coordinator etc.) under the PACPOL/IMO Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme. It is considered to be more cost-effective to instead take advantage of the numerous specialist spill training activities that are already offered in countries adjacent to the region (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, United States of America), by sending Pacific islands delegates to these specialist courses on an opportunistic and needs basis, rather than to duplicate these courses within the region.

The annual marine spill response workshops under the PACPOL/IMO Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme are designed to provide an important supplement to these supra-regional courses by ensuring a regionally relevant content within a regional location.

This combination of an annual regional workshop with attendance at specialist courses in countries adjacent to the region should provide the optimum level of marine spill training for the region, within the limits of available resources.

In addition to the seed funding from IMO, support-in-kind for the workshop, mainly in the form of providing expert presenters and trainers, is being sought from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the oil industry.

Reference

(Steve Raaymakers is currently engaged as Marine Pollution Adviser with SPREP. His authorship of 'Slick Talk' does not necessarily represent the views of SPREP nor the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. His contact details are: PO Box 240, Apia, SAMOA, Telephone (685) 21929, Facsimile (685) 20231, E-mail stever@sprep.org.ws )