Ballast Water Management Under the Ballast Water Management Convention - Global Maritime Transport and Ballast Water Management: Issues and Solutions - page 92

unnecessary discharge of ballast water that has been taken up in another port should
be avoided. Managed ballast water which is mixed with unmanaged ballast water is
no longer in compliance with Regulations D-1 and D-2.

Ballast Water Management Requirements

By the basic principle, vessels (not ports) are required to conduct BWM according
to the requirements of the BWM Convention. However, port reception facilities are
also considered by the BWM Convention as a BWM option, i.e., Regulation B-3.6
and Guidelines for ballast water reception facilities (G5) (G5 Guidelines) (IMO
2006b ). During the BWM Convention negotiations ballast water reception facilities
were considered as the primary BWM measure. However, as ships may need to
conduct ballast water operations also outside ports (see chapter “ Vessels and Ballast
Water ” ), such reception facilities would not cover all ballast water discharges.
Therefore, treatment on board ship before ballast water discharge is required.
Standards for BWM are dealt with by the BWM Convention in Regulations D-1
and D-2. The BWM Convention introduces these two different protective regimes
as a sequential implementation regime:

• Ballast Water Exchange Standard (Regulation D-1, so called D-1 standard)

requiring ships to exchange a minimum of 95 % ballast water volume;

• Ballast Water Performance Standard (Regulation D-2, so called D-2 standard)

requires that the discharge of ballast water have the number of viable organisms
below the specifi ed limits.

The D-2 standard is based on a limited number of organisms that can be dis-
charged with ballast water. The phase-in of the D-2 standard was originally
planned gradually, based on the vessels total ballast tanks capacity and if these
vessels are existing or are new builds (see Fig. 1 ). When the phase-in dates were
set, the expectation was that technology and manufacturing capacity would
be fi rst available for vessels with lower ballast water capacities and fl ow rates.
As such dates were set to allow a gradual maturity of the technology with the
expectation that the very high fl ow rates would come later due to the technical
challenges. These include that on smaller vessels due to engine room limited
space it might be diffi cult to install ballast water management systems (BWMS)
at that time. Higher fl ow rates were considered diffi cult as the fi rst generation of
BWMS was not able to meet these fl ow requirements.
However, the BWM Convention has not come into force and certain phase-in
dates have already passed. This resulted in a debate at IMO and Marine Environment
Protection Committee (MEPC) at its 65th session (May 2013) approved a draft IMO
Assembly resolution on the application of Regulation B-3 of the BWM Convention,
which addresses the fi xed dates, to ease and facilitate the smooth implementation of
the BWM Convention. This was approved at the 28th session of the IMO Assembly
(25 November to 4 December 2013). This resolution recommends that ships