A Ballast Discharge Monitoring System for Great Lakes Relevant Ships: A Guidebook for Researchers, Ship Owners, and Agency Officials

The purpose of this Guidebook is to share with regulatory authorities, ship owners and researchers basic guidelines developed by the Great Ships Initiative (GSI) for collecting and analyzing representative samples of living organisms in ballast discharge from Great Lakesrelevant ships. Specifically, this Guidebook details methods for retrieving quantitative samples from ships to determine live organism densities in three size classes of organisms (equal to or greater than 50 micrometers in minimum dimension, less than 50 micrometers and equal to or greater than 10 micrometers in minimum dimension, and less than 10 micrometers in minimum dimension), water quality parameters, and whole effluent toxicity tests. Methods associated with sample analysis are not currently part of this Guidebook, but GSI Standard Operating Procedures for analysis are the same as for land‐based tests of ballast water treatment systems (BWTSs), and can be downloaded from GSI's website (www.greatshipsinitiative.org). It is important to note that the methods described here are preliminary and subject to revision over time. GSI will periodically update this Guidebook and repost new versions on its website over time.