Publication Abstract

The Working Group on Ballast and Other Ship Vectors under the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, and International Maritime Organization (ICES/IOC/IMO WGBOSV) aims to provide scientific support to international decision-making to reduce the risk of spread and establishment of non-native species via maritime transport. The work contributes to ICES Strategic Plan by improving understanding between anthropogenic activities and marine ecosystems. This report outlines the achievements during 2022–2024. The work of the group consisted of reporting on national actions; collaborative research, and management actions on shipping vectors; as well as advancing the use of novel monitoring approaches and studying species dispersal mechanisms associated with maritime transport.

Concerning ballast water, several members of the group collated a dataset of treated ballast water samples from ships and published a peer-reviewed article addressing ships’ compliance to the ballast water performance standard of IMO. The study concluded that compliance testing should be increased globally with periodic testing to ensure that ballast water management systems remain operational after commissioning.

The group has provided impartial and evidence-based recommendations to the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) and Sub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR) of IMO in ballast water and biofouling-related matters. The most significant contribution to IMO included two submissions to the 10^th session of PPR in 2023; 1) guidelines for testing ship biofouling in-water cleaning systems to assess the efficacy of these systems, and 2) a commenting paper to provide clarifications and avoid subjective wording in the revised Biofouling Guidelines of IMO.

Several research elements provided new information on tracking the movement of ships potentially translocating species between distinct biogeographic regions. This work further highlighted the importance of relatively pristine areas, such as the Arctic and Antarctic region, and identified biogeographic barriers limiting natural spread of organisms within distinct coastal regions. Regarding molecular methods, an important achievement was a workshop following the International Conference on Marine Bioinvasions XI (ICMB XI) 2023, to provide recommendations to the end-users of these tools, which may help monitoring activities to identify newly introduced species.

Jorge Arteaga; John Attridge; Sarah Bailey; Cátia Bartilotti; April Blakeslee; Christopher Brown; Allegra Cangelosi; João Canning-Clode; James Carlton; Oscar Casas-Monroy; Paula Chainho; Gordon Copp*; Amelia Curd; John Darling; Phil Davison*; Stephanie Delacroix; Lisa Drake; Frank Fuhr; Bella Galil; Arjan Gittenberger; Jesica Goldsmit; Stephan Gollasch; Lena Granhag; Joanna Hegele-Drywa; Nicole Heibeck; Kimberly Howland; Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen; Anders Jelmert; Kathe Jensen; Jenni Kakkonen; Aino Kalske; Paraskevi Karachle; Francis Kerckhof; Thomas Kerkhove; Anaïs Lacoursière; Erwann Legrand; Agnese Marchini; Pedro Martinez; Iveta Matejusova; Arlie McCarthy; Cynthia McKenzie; Christopher McKindsey; Bernadette Molough-ney; Debbie Murphy; Aleksas Narscius; Monika Normant-Saremba; Anna Occhipinti-Ambrogi; Sergej Olenin; Okko Outinen; Marijana Pecarevic; Judith Pederson; Sabine Reuland; Cyrena Riley; Macarena Ros; Lisa Röpke; Maelle Sevellec; Nathalie Simard; Greta Srebaliene; Peter Stehouwer; Solvita Strake; William Sturdy; Yun Sun; Mario Tamburri; Cato ten Hallers-Tjabbes; Matthew TenEyck; Carolyn Tepolt; Thomas Therriault; Hannah Tidbury; Carolin Uhlir; Frédérique Viard; Mariusz Zabrocki; Argyro Zenetos; Tanya Zervoudaki

Joint ICES/IOC/IMO Working Group on Ballast and Other Ship Vectors (WGBOSV)