Assessing compliance with ballast water international regulations in Argentina

ÁVILA VELANDIA, MARÍA FERNANDA; ALMADA, PABLO; SYLVESTER, FRANCISCO; BOLTOVSKOY, DEMETRIO

Niagara Falls

Conferencia; international conference on aquatic invasive species (ICAIS); 2013

Management of vessel ballast water is internationally regulated to prevent species introductions in marine and freshwater habitats, yet compliance with current normative varies geographically. In South America, in particular, there have been few attempts at evaluating observance of these guidelines. We collected and processed ballast-water reporting forms from all international vessels arriving in the port of Buenos Aires (the busiest container shipping hub in Argentina) between June 2010 and June 2011, Reported ballast water discharges were compared with the balance between downloaded and uploaded cargo by the same vessels obtained independently from the port authority. During the period covered, a total of 855 large commercial vessels called Buenos Aires moving a cargo volume of 4.7 (imports) and 4.3 (exports) million t. Only 404 of these vessels submitted a ballast-water reporting form. A large proportion of these forms were incomplete, had errors, and most (1355 out of 1592 tanks) declared no ballast water discharges in Buenos Aires. Considering that the average ballast-to-load-ratio is about 0.5, the analysis of cargo movements suggests that information contained in these ballast water reporting forms is highly biased: up to 23% of all vessels arriving in Buenos Aires left this port with 1000 t of cargo more than they brought in (for 6% of the vessels this difference was over 5000 t), strongly suggesting that ballast should had been released by these ships; yet only two reported ballast water discharges. Information on ballast water age is fragmentary, but many of the ballast water tanks had been loaded less than 2-3 weeks before arrival in Buenos Aires. While the introduction risk to this freshwater port from predominantly marine sources is probably low due to poor environmental match, the situation is different for the many marine ports along the Argentine Atlantic coast. In addition, some of these marine ports (e.g., Bahía Blanca, Quequén) are net exporters of commodities (grain, beef), which makes them particularly vulnerable to massive ballast water discharges. So far at least 100 aquatic nonindigenous species have been recorded in Argentina, many of which have shipping vectors as the most likely route of introduction. Our preliminary results indicate that control mechanisms aimed at enforcing current regulations must be tightened significantly in to ensure proper compliance and prevent further introductions.