22 



And so it is extremely important to look at ballast now, for the 

 next decade and the next decades to come, as something we can by 

 implementation of a few more technologies and international coop- 

 eration severely depress this mechanism and reduce the rate of in- 

 vasions which are now rather staggering. 

 Mr. LiPiNSKi. Thank you. Mr. Kingston? 

 Mr. Kingston. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Captain Donohoe, you had mentioned— actually, Mr. Manton and 

 Mr. Coble asked two questions I want to tie in. Mr. Manton asked 

 what was the worst creature and Mr. Coble said who is not comply- 

 ing. 



Have you thought about trying to target the top 10 worst crea- 

 tures and find out what the correlation is between compliance in 

 those countries and where those species are indigenous? 



Captain Donohoe. No, sir, we have not. I am not sure we are in 

 a position— Dr. Carlton may be able to give you a list of the top 10, 

 or the 10 most wanted creatures. 



Mr. Kingston. It would just make sense to target, even though 

 you cannot get everybody, at least start strong-arming those coun- 

 tries for voluntary compliance. 

 Dr. Carlton. Do you mean the top 10 species not yet here? 

 Mr. Kingston. Either way. Because I assume the zebra mussel is 

 still coming in; right? to u 



Dr. Carlton. We hope not, not into the Great Lakes. It zebra 

 mussel is coming in, it could come in in freshwater ballast coming 

 into other freshwater ports, but hopefully not into the Great Lakes. 

 Mr. Kingston. Well, would it make sense to figure out which 

 were the most damaging species and find out where they are indig- 

 enous and then try to work on those countries for voluntary com- 

 pliance? 



Dr. Carlton. It would be of great interest to have a global hot 

 spots checklist and know where there were major pulses right now 

 of invasions occurring; where there were major population in- 

 creases of exotic species that we do not desire in this country; we 

 would rather not have water from those places. 



A good example right now is there is a small crustacean (shrimp- 

 like organism) which has become extremely abundant in the Rhine 

 River through the Netherlands and Germany, and it is likely if we 

 are getting Rhine River water, we could get that little organism. 

 Mr. Kingston. Well, if, as Mr. Taylor was saying, you could 

 filter out these species on the ships from the countries with the 

 worst species that we need to target, the more critical areas, is it 

 possible, is there technology, and. Captain Donohoe, you might 

 know, if there is some sort of filter that could be used. 



And I know that would be more expensive, but if you do not re- 

 quire it universally but just in the crucial areas, would that be a 

 step in the right direction? 



Dr. Carlton. It is the kind of thing we are talking about in this 

 proposed legislation where it would be one of the demonstration op- 

 tions. 



Could we, in fact, attempt to install some kind of a filtration 

 system on a test vessel and see how it would work? Can we trans- 

 fer some of this filtration technology which exists in water filtra- 

 tion plants into the ship? In a ship's engine room or ship's ballast- 



