What more is the Coast Guard doing to protect the Great Lakes from aquatic nuisance species coming from ballast water?
This year the Coast Guard is focusing on many activities. These are some of the more noteworthy projects: Investigating potential technologies. Technologies are being investigated worldwide by government, industry, academic and non-governmental interests. Among the technologies are filtration, hydrocyclonic separation and chemical and physical biocides (i.e. ozone, chlorine, ultraviolet radiation, heat treatment and vacuum). However, none of these has yet been proven effective in a shipboard application. The Coast Guard expects to receive soon a report evaluating the testing methods and results of four private companies currently engaged in developing ballast water treatment systems. These projects represent a range from a small-scale shipboard installation to dockside tests. A second project sponsored by the Coast Guard is testing and evaluating two general approaches to ballast water treatment, one using filtration and ultraviolet light and the other using hydrocyclonic separation an
