The environmental threat posed by the disposal of ballast water from cargo ships continues to be of concern to marine interests, and the International Maritime Organisation is urging Caribbean nations and the wider Americas to ratify the new convention that seeks to police the issue.

Ballast is seawater taken in by a ship to keep it stable as it unloads cargo.

The ships take in the water at one port and releases it at another. The concern for marine interests is that the process often results in the transfer of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens.

IMO member countries have already adopted the convention, but IMO representatives want regional governments to move more swiftly in giving it their legal endorsement.

Explaining the danger, IMO's chief technical advisor in the Marine Environment Division, Ste Raaymakers, says the organisms either travel in the ballast water or attached to the ship's hull, often for months at a time.

Marine species will survive in the ballast water while seaweed and barnacles cling to the hull. Barnacle is a type of shellfish that clings to rocks and ships.

"Those are foreign species that do not have their natural predators to keep them under control, so they can become what are called invasive species and begin to spread," said Raaymakers.

Studies show that invasive species are one of the major threats to global biodiversity and examples of severe damage to high value protected areas are numerous in terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments.

Once invasive species establish themselves, the impact is usually irreversible.

Many marine protected areas are located next to major ports and shipping lanes, and in some cases may actually host ports and shipping activity within their boundaries.

A prime example is the 2,300 kilometre Great Barrier Reef which sits along the northeast coast of Australia.

Raaymakers who is attending the 11th inter-governmental meeting on the Action Plan for the Caribbean Environment Programme CEP, in Montego Bay, is appealing to Jamaica and the wider Caribbean to rapidly ratify the new convention so that action can be taken swiftly before severe ecological problems develop.

"The problem is also compounded by the fact that there are many diseases, pathogens, toxic organisms even things like cholera that can be transferred in ballast water."

The threat is serious enough, he adds, to cause "potentially even death in human beings."

There is a GloBallast Programme in place to assist developing countries:

. reduce the transfer of harmful organisms in ballast water;

. implement the current IMO Ballast water gudelines; and

. prepare for the implementation of the IMO ballast water convention when it comes into force.

Raaymakers says the IMO is offering funding, technical advice and support to develop the institutional arrangements required to put the region in a strong enough position to deal with the problem.

However, for the convention to become mandatory all countries have to endorse it.

"This is a problem for the Caribbean region right now so we need to respond to it right now," he said.

The implementation process, he adds will prove difficult as it involves many legal, biological and technical aspects such as changing the design, construction and operation of ships.

But there are research and development programmes underway, stimulated by the new convention, to come up with technological solutions so that every ship can be fitted with a ballast water treatment system.

In the meantime, there is only one demonstration site in the region located in Brazil which the IMO plans to extend to the Caribbean.

Raaymakers is hoping that the IMO's presence at the conference will prompt the region to accept its invitation.

"We would like to establish demonstration sites in the Caribbean to put in place a regional plan to begin to try to address the issue," he said.

It was only February this year that IMO member countries adopted the convention after 14 years of complex and sensitive negotiations.

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