The center will have four or five full-time employees, including an engineer and technicians who will test strategies and calculate how expensive and effective they are, Tamburri said.
The researchers won't be performing law-enforcement duties or inspecting random ships pulling into Baltimore Harbor, he said.
Instead, they will treat the Cape Washington and three other dedicated vessels, including a barge, as floating labs.
About $700,000 a year for the research will come from the Maryland Port Adminstration and other state agencies, with the rest of the funding coming from federal agencies.
The researchers will be providing data to the Coast Guard, which is trying to determine whether it should impose more strict regulations requiring treatment of ballast water.
The House of Representatives approved a bill in April to require treatment of all ballast water starting next year. The Senate has yet to approve the treatment requirement, and it's not yet clear what technologies will qualify as effective treatment.
University of Maryland scientists will be working with another major center for the study of exotic species, the Marine Invasions Lab at the Smithsonsian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater.
Greg Ruiz, director of the Marine Invasions Lab, said that his group has spent years studying where exotic species come from and why they cause problems.
Now the new center at the University of Maryland will take that knowledge to a practical level, studying which technical systems can best eradicate invasive hitchhikers, Ruiz said.
It's not a simple question, because some strategies - like adding bleach or other chemicals to ballast water to kill organisms -- could have unintended consequences to the enviroment when they're released, he said.
tom.pelton@baltsun.com
