Ecological Risk Assessment of Ballast Water

This paper identifies ballast water from vessels in Szczecin harbor to be of the highest risk category as far as transmitting living alien species is concerned. The species when encountering similar environmental conditions become a risk to the local species as food competitors treating the local species as food and expand in an invasive way, spreading formerly unknown diseases to the local environment.Moreover, they become dangerous to human health as well as hindering economy development by reducing fish resources and growing on hydro-technical facilities.