Ships have ballast tanks, which take on water in far away ports and then dump the ballast in other ports. Makes a lot of sense right? Sure unless you consider what is in that water, such as non-native species which might screw up the food chain and eco-systems of where ever it is that the ballast is dumped.

What if the ships have designated ballast dump areas and in those areas AUVs would swim around and collect any species, which were not from the area. Additionally nets could be used which came up from the bottom of the seafloor up to six feet to corral some of the invading species. Perhaps we could cut down the problem by seventy five percent and work from there?

Recently on an online think tank a member suggested that we use a ship lane that foreign ships would go thru and under it would be a giant swimming pool like filter which would suck the water thru it and create a flow of about 1-3 kts as the water was re-circulated into it. The ballast would be dropped at the exact point where the system was underneath and it would be a specific point marked between two buoys. This is only one of several plans being floated around at a recent online think tank I visited? Perhaps you have ideas? It is a serious problem so please consider this in 2006.