12 



2 weeks earlier. Our research team boarded this vessel and opened 

 up a hatch to the cargo hold, which was filled with ballast water 

 from the Mediterranean. A school of 50 fish swam by. The fish was 

 called a jack, and it turned out to be a species which had invaded 

 the Mediterranean from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal. This 

 ship released all of these fish, and many more, into Chesapeake 

 Bay. 



On September 15, 1993, a bulk cargo vessel from Liverpool ar- 

 rived in Chesape£ike Bay. In her hold was another fish known as 

 a sprat, and here, too, a school of 50 fish were seen swimming in 

 the ballast water. All of these fish, and many more, were released 

 into the bay. 



Had someone proposed to intentionally introduce these fish, for 

 whatever reason, many trees would be needed to produce enough 

 paper for the required environmental impact statement. Having 

 been written, the proposal would have been rejected anyway, and 

 yet these fish were released in Chesapeake Bay because they were 

 in a ballast tank and not in a fish tank. 



Our aquatic communities — our rivers, our lakes, estuaries, bays, 

 ports, salt marshes — are now being invaded by a host of exotic or- 

 ganisms in a biological game of ecological roulette. No State in the 

 United States is immune to future invasions — invasions that in- 

 clude predators, competitors, and diseases. These same regions 

 support important fisheries, navigation, and recreational resources 

 that are clearly worth billions of dollars. 



In most cases, exotic species do not come to our attention because 

 they appear to have no immediate and profound human impact. 

 But this means that the mechanisms that bring these species to us 

 continue unabated, and with every hourly spin of the exotic species 

 roulette wheel, a non-indigenous animal or plant with a vast poten- 

 tial for altering our society could be released. 



Our world changed dramatically on June 1, 1988, when the zebra 

 mussel was discovered in the Great Lakes. The mussel came from 

 the Black Sea in ballast water. This was a discovery of such signifi- 

 cance that much of our activity in non-indigenous species can be 

 dated as BZM or AZM, before or after zebra mussels. 



The year is now 6 AZM, and this mussel has become the watch 

 animal of American waters under the assumption that no new in- 

 vasion will eclipse it. Thanks to the Non-Indigenous Species Act, 

 we are now regulating the ballast being released in the Great 

 Lakes. Most of our great rivers and all of our coasts remain vulner- 

 able this morning. 



Ships today are one of the greatest transporters of the world's 

 aquatic life, carrying tens of millions of gallons of ballast water and 

 within them an immense diversity of life. Thousands of species are 

 in motion around the world, and hundreds and hundreds of species 

 are headed as we speak to the United States. 



In 1990, an aggressive omnivorous European green crab ap- 

 peared in San Francisco Bay where it now occurs by the tens of 

 thousands. The green crab's diet includes commercially important 

 clams, other crabs, including perhaps the native Dungeness crab, 

 and a vast number of other species. It would be hard to find, if we 

 had searched the world, a more potentially devastating species. 



