Stricter restrictions on ship ballast

Vessel deballasting.

From the new year Norway will require that all larger ships will have to empty their ballast water tanks a minimum of 200 nautical miles from Norwegian shores, Aftenposten reports.

The reason is that unclean ballast water may contain organisms which could be a serious threat to species native to Norwegian waters.

Norway is one of the first countries to follow advice from the UN to introduce restrictions on the dumping of ballast water.

The environmental organization WWF is of the opinion that Norway in addition must demand that the ballast water to be dumped must first be cleansed.

Ballast water is used to to trim cargo vessels sailing without cargo. More than 10 billion tons of ballast water are transported across the world’s oceans annually.

At present ships often dump this water close to shore, and even in the harbor basins.

Source: Norway Post / NRK / Aftenposten