Grant: Interaction Grants Program

Ship ballast water is a major vector for the transportation of invasive aquatic organisms throughout the world ocean, and the global shipping industry has come under increasing pressure by the United Nations (UN) International Marine Organization (IMO) to develop ballast water remediation methods. A proposed remediation method is the disinfection of ballast water with ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and this is currently an area of intense interest for commercial leaders in the field. However, much of the existing knowledge on the use of UV for water disinfection arises from research performed on fresh water systems, yet the majority of the worlds commercial shipping fleet operates in the marine environment. This initiative proposes to establish a collaboration between Dalhousie University research laboratories and Trojan Technologies an international commercial leader in water treatment technology in order to develop a database of water quality information that in turn will support development of marine ballast water remediation methodologies. Trojan Technologies is a Canadian company internationally recognized in advanced UV water treatment technologies, and in recent years, has developed a strong interest in applying their established fresh water UV treatment techniques to disinfection of marine ballast water. Critical to the development of these techniques, is detailed knowledge of the chemical and biological dynamics in marine systems, which can differ substantially from fresh water systems. In contrast to the targets of UV disinfection of fresh water, which concerns itself primarily with fairly well characterized microbes that can cause disease, the marine environment presents a very wide range of organisms from phytoplankton to invertebrate larvae, many of which could cause ecological harm if transported to new environments. The scientific and technical expertise required to quantitatively characterize the marine environments that the proposed UV ballast water treatment systems will operate in will be provided by Dr. John Cullen of the Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University and John Batt, manager of the Aquatron Laboratory. Dr. Cullen has a proven and long-established track record of expertise in in situ bio-optical measurements and phytoplankton physiology and ecology, including the effects of UV on the marine environment. Currently, Dr. Cullens research group operates an autonomous ocean observatory in the Bedford Basin, near Halifax, NS (Bedford Basin Ocean Monitoring Buoy BBOMB). This system is comprised of an instrumented buoy, equipped with physical, chemical, optical and meteorological sensors that transmit their data in near real time to a server at Dalhousie University, where selected data are displayed on a public access website http://bbomb.ceotr.ca. The Aquatron Laboratory is a nationally accessed aquatic research facility operated by Dalhousie University, and has a large range of facilities and expertise available to university researchers, government and industry. In the context of the development of UV water treatment technologies, the Aquatron Laboratory is uniquely equipped to perform research on the effects of UV disinfection on a wide variety of organisms.