We need to help prevent outbreaks overseas too, says the Government’s first Biological Security Strategy (Defra, July, 2018), as diseases can spread insecurity, harm trade and increase migration.
Clearly, borders are the key entry points to prevent incoming biological risks. The strategy mentions the use of detection dogs to sniff out products of animal origin at ports, for passengers carrying illicit items, and investment in new detection technologies. Strangely, it says nothing about the entry of invasive non-native species (INNS) on vessels’ hulls, in ballast water or on board, in sea containers, general cargo or dunnage.
INNS are species not naturally occurring in the UK and, having gained entry, have out-gunned native species. Who can forget the North American signal crayfish, introduced in the 1970s to farm for sale in Scandinavia. Being a voracious predator, it duly escaped and has been responsible for decimating the native population of white-clawed crayfish. It eats anything it comes across, such as fish, frogs and invertebrates, as well as plants, and even its own. This unbalances ecosystems and attempts at elimination are futile.
Some ports have been stealing a lead on this. Australia astutely issued its Biosecurity Act in 2015 with accompanying guidance in 2017. This talks about mooring and that vessels can only enter the country at a port that has appropriate facilities and qualified personnel (trained biosecurity officers) to manage biosecurity risks. To be approved as a ‘first point of entry’, a port must have the correct facilities, arrangements and systems in place. Logical and sensible.
Ready for action
The Scottish Islands have a biosecurity framework in place while marinas and ABP have prepared plans and a framework, respectively, in the Humber. The Port of Plymouth became the first in England to finalise a plan (September 2018) to tackle INNS, backed by regulator Natural England. It aims to enhance the protection of the Plymouth Sound and Tamar Estuaries Marine Protected Area, including how to identify and respond to new sightings. Collaboration is absolutely critical: the Tamar Estuaries Consultative Forum, made up of the organisations that manage the waterway, will drive and monitor the plan.
The biosecurity plan aims to avoid invasive species arriving in Plymouth and curtail their march into other ports and estuaries. Pacific oysters and slipper limpets top the Devon INNS Chart, presenting the highest environmental and economic risk to the port, closely followed by pesky orange-tipped and orange-cloaked sea squirts. This will be an ongoing challenge as half of the 65,000 annual vessel movements are military-related while the port is a recreational boating hub.
To put this in perspective, INNS costs the British economy over £1.7bn every year through displacing native species, spreading disease, clogging waterways and intakes, restricting navigation, affecting water quality and damaging structures.
Until 2024 when all ships must have a Ballast Water Management (BWM) Treatment System, all commercial ports need to be implementing aspects of the IMO’s BWM Convention (2004) to prevent the illegal exchange of ballast water and sediment within 200 nautical miles of shore. Port authorities and terminal operators need to be communicating their expectations on the status of antifouling on hulls to shipping lines, as they have become accustomed to doing regarding safety matters. Port workers need to be vigilant and proactive, containing any live species, bagging dead ones and reporting sightings, including areas that could become a habitat for INNS. Ship repair facilities and recreational users can be equally observant when lifting and recovering craft or leaving anchorage, ensuring checking and cleaning of chains, and air-drying equipment before stowage and safe capture (and disposal) of wash waters.
It’s certainly worth reminding yourself what Pacific wireweed, a veined whelk, Chinese mitten crab and vicious killer shrimp (curled, semi-transparent, brown-striped) look like, because we don’t want any more of them on our shores in the UK.
Charles Haine is technical director for maritime at WSP.
