BALLAST ALIENS

Keith NuthallSHIP'S masters are always alert to the threat posed by stowaways, but not necessarily when those uninvited passengers have scales, fins and gills. Both the International Maritime Organisation and the European Union are working to tighten global environmental regulations that prevent the accidental transportation of such illegal aliens in ballast water. The problem is not the limited difficulties they cause in board, but the havoc that they wreak when they are pumped out into a foreign ecosystem. For instance, the voracious Asian carp has been ...


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