Development a Monitoring System for Detecting Marine Microorganisms in Ballast Water

Abstract

The problems of marine invasive species carried by ballast water are greatly severe due to the growing trade using shipping, especially last two decades. Ballast water treatment systems to tackle the problems have been developed. However we need a monitoring system to evaluate the performance of the treatment systems. In this study, a monitoring system using micro fluidic devices has been developed to detect living marine species in ballast water. The monitoring system consists of two sub-systems one is for 10-50 μm species and the other for >50 μm ones, which was designed to be used in situ on ships. The results of this study showed that the developed system to assess the working performance of the ballast water treatment system will be useful in the international commercial ships.