During 2007, Bernd Blasius at Carl Von Ossietzky University in Oldenberg, Germany, and his colleagues analysed the routes of over 16,000 cargo ships through onboard automatic transmitters to map the links between the ports they visited.The top ports at risk were the Panama Canal, followed by the Suez Canal, Shanghai, Singapore, and Antwerp. The list also featured Piraeus, Houston, Santos, Tianjin, Hamburg, and Barcelona.
"The model allows for identification of bioinvasion hot-spots, high risk routes and major source regions from which bioinvasion is most likely to occur and thus enables the identification of high risk scenarios, which are necessary for the development and implementation of effective prevention and management programmes," said Blasius. Full Story
