1. With pressure on the maritime industry to clean up its ways and invest in new technology to do so, vessels' hulls - and in particular what grows on them - has now come in to the spotlight. In late March, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) launched a five-year project named GloFouling, which will examine the issues of bioinvasions from organisms that build up on the ships' hull and other marine structures. "National administrations and regional IGOs [intergovernmental organisations] will work with the project to analyse their needs and develop baseline and economic assessments that will help decision makers draft new policies or action plans to implement the Biofouling Guidelines issued by the IMO in 2011," said the IMO. Lee Adamson, from the IMO's public information services, explained in more detail why the regulator is turning its attention to fouling on ships hulls. "Fouling is important for shipowners, largely because it increases the hydrodynamic drag of a ship, which translates into greater energy needs to maintain the same speed, and therefore higher operating costs. Heavy biofouling can also reduce the lifetime of a ship's hull," Adamson said.
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