When objects are submerged in water, organisms adhere to their surfaces and form a biofouling layer. The biggest concern for people is biofouling on ship hulls. It was noticed long ago that biofouling causes slower sailing and higher gas consumption, as well as more complicated and expensive boat maintain. Because of this people have attempted using various coatings to prevent the attachment of organisms. People began by using materials such as tar, wax and lead, while later organotin compounds, copper and other biocides became more popular. With time people noticed that those coatings don't only affect biofouling organisms on ship hulls, but also have a major impact on organisms that live in sediments and in the water column nearby. Major impacts were observed, such as change of behaviour, growth, development and reproduction of many organisms, as well as lack of calcification and the presentation of imposex characteristics in molluscs. Given these environmental impacts, new methods are being sought for protecting ship hulls from biofouling which won't have any impact on the environment and non-targeted species. Most of these methods revolve around mimicing organisms that live in the aquatic environment and have natural protection against attachment of foreign organisms to their bodies. This is achieved by different nano/micro structures or chemical structures on the surface which makes attachment more difficult. These new methods are still in their developmental stages and are not yet economical to replace current commercial methods, however they show promise in prevention of biofouling while minimizing environmental impact.