Back to Our Beginnings
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself. . . . Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.
—Dave Barry
We know more about space and setting up shop there than we know about setting up shop under the ocean. We know more about the topography of our moon and Mars and have better maps of those two celestial bodies than we do about the floors of our own bodies of water.
More humans have spent more continuous time in space than underwater. Up to now only a handful of humans have lived “down and under” for a short while. In fact, the record for living underwater in a structure (not a submarine) is held by two biologists who spent nearly seventy days in an undersea environment. Astronaut Peggy Whitson set the NASA record for most logged time in space—more than 650 days. Her main problem was lack of gravity, an aquanaut’s would be lack of sunlight.[1]
The ocean is divided into three zones based on depth and light level. The upper 656 feet of the ocean is called the euphotic or “sunlight” zone. This zone contains the vast majority of commercial fisheries and is home to many protected marine mammals and sea turtles. Humans can’t see much below 100 feet, but underwater lighting enhances their view while also attracting marine life.
The next zone is the dysphotic or “twilight zone.” Some sunlight reaches this zone but not enough for photosynthesis to occur. This zone goes down to about 3,300 feet. The last zone is the aphotic or “midnight zone.” No sunlight penetrates this zone, and it can reach depths of close to 20,000 feet. Sometimes people divide the midnight zone into two zones: the aphotic zone and the spooky sounding “abyss.” At depths of 3,000–6,000 meters (9,800–19,700 ft), this zone remains in perpetual darkness. It alone makes up over 83 percent of the ocean.
Geographers divide the ocean into five major basins: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern. Smaller ocean regions such as the Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Bay of Bengal are called seas, gulfs, and bays. Inland bodies of saltwater such as the Caspian Sea and the Great Salt Lake are distinct from the world’s oceans.[2]
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, coinventor of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), captured the imagination of the world by sharing his deep dives, exploration of shipwrecks, and discovery of previously unknown marine flora and fauna, especially through The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, his TV program from 1966 to 1976. At the time, Cousteau created a tidal wave of interest in undersea exploration. However, since then, interest in sending humans to live underwater for extended periods of time has ebbed. Once there were as many as sixty underwater habitats around the globe.[3] But excitement for such research habitats dwindled and the money dried up. The US Navy tried to staff SEALAB, an undersea experiment for itself and NASA in 1964. Unfortunately, SEALAB was discontinued after the death of an aquanaut who was trying to repair leaks in the structure.[4]
As of 2012 just three underwater laboratories remained,[5] as opposed to underwater hotels. At one of these, the Jules’ Undersea Lodge, guests must actually scuba dive twenty-one feet beneath the surface of the sea. The lodge offers everything from education and training facilities to undersea weddings and luxury romantic getaways.[6] Jules’ is in the Florida Keys, as are the Marine Lab, which is used as a research and training base by the US Navy, among others, and NASA’s Aquarius, which NOAA plans to kill even though its budget is called “decimal dust,” a little over $1 million.[7]
But the tide may be turning as private investors are starting to view the oceans as alternative places to build cities. Proponents and private investors maintain it could help alleviate overpopulation problems or offer a way to preserve our species—a kind of reverse Noah’s Ark—in the event of a catastrophic cataclysm.[8]
Making habitats with multiple modules made of steel, glass, and special cement for underwater use would be simpler than trying to create one giant bubble. Smaller structures could be added or taken away to create living space for as many people as desired. Most likely, we wouldn’t want to build any deeper than one thousand feet, because the pressures at such depths would require very thick walls on-site and excessive periods of decompression for those returning to the surface.[9]
Some scientists believe living underwater is a logical solution to the population bomb or environmental collapse since it would be cheaper and easier to pull off than founding space colonies. And oceanographers believe that the only way to really understand what’s happening in the ocean is to go down there for extended periods of hands-on time instead of just for an hour or so with SCUBA gear.[10]
The air needed to sustain aquanauts depends upon the depth of the habitat. Air could be either pumped from the surface or refiltered from down below via a chemical product called Sodasorb added to react with, and remove, carbon dioxide. Future aquanauts could also use artificially created life-forms or artificial “gills” to filter and/or harvest oxygen.[11] Currently, artificial gills are still science fiction, but companies are working on making them a reality and are in the very early stages of research and development.[12]
Creating permanent dwellings at sea is called seasteading and has long been the stuff of science fiction, like the postapocalyptic movie Waterworld.[13] Academics and architects from the Seasteading Institute, cofounded by PayPal founder Peter Thiel and political economic theorist Patri Friedman, have created designs for permanent, innovative communities floating at sea and are working on prototypes for construction in the next decade. Also a think tank, the Seasteading Institute has been sponsoring studies on additional possibilities for ocean-based structures.[14]
Seasteaders are a diverse global team of marine biologists, nautical engineers, aquaculture farmers, medical researchers, investors, environmentalists, and artists. They plan to build floating islands, or seasteads, to host aquaculture farms, floating health-care facilities, medical research islands, and sustainable energy powerhouses.
Freedom from taxes, as fantasized about, would be a tricky question. The United States already demands that its citizens pay income tax even when they are living abroad—and seasteads would be considered “abroad.” Until seasteaders are able to bank their money with independent, oceangoing financial institutions, they may not be able to escape the tax collector’s clutches.
Some seasteaders think the way forward is to build less ambitious offshore communities to demonstrate the potential of the idea. By basing themselves just outside countries’ territorial waters to avoid some of their laws, floating habitats could show land-based governments how such things as low taxes, light business regulation, and free access for foreign workers can produce wealth without ill effects.[15] But such exo-communities would have a hard time protecting their space—the US armed services might not come to their aid against modern-day pirates or internal disorder. And if giant corporations develop seasteads, they might take on the attitude and priorities of oligarchs with a “company-run town” attitude.
Seasteaders who are thinking small for potential offshore communities are leaning toward prefab structures towed in segments—with floatation chambers so they won’t sink—and then joined together at selected locations.
A myriad of new and old, reliable materials would be used to construct seastead structures: corrosion-resistant steel, lightweight, low-permeability foam cement, recycled plastic, and carbon fiber will be used to make modules. These structures could be added or deleted to create living spaces for as many people as desired while, again, going no deeper than one thousand feet.
Barge-like floating pontoon structures and platforms like offshore oil rigs built on floating columns are the most rugged possibilities for foundations but are also very expensive. Various shipbuilders have proposed an assortment of designs for floating cities based on massive “mega-float” pontoons, with skyscrapers towering above the waterline. Unfortunately, these would only work in calm, shallow waters—and would tend to be within land-based governments’ territorial limits.[16]
Basic pontoon barge-type structures are the cheapest of options, but they are even more vulnerable than ships in choppy seas. In waters less than eight thousand feet deep, an option would be to moor a platform to the seabed, for example, to a number of barely submerged islands off the coast of California.[17] That said, in volcano and earthquake country, such islands might be available for only a short and scary stay.
British designer Phil Pauley has developed a concept for a sea habitat comprising interconnected spherical modules that could submerge to hide during storms and rest at the surface in good weather. To reach much deeper waters, communities could float freely or at anchor.[18]
Others are investigating this technique on a smaller scale. Do-it-yourself “ball stead” homes, for example, achieve buoyancy and stable surface using a heavy weight anchored well below the surface that keeps the ball-shaped structure from moving amid the waves.[19]
Simple cement structures reinforced with steel can displace massive amounts of water and last for decades or even centuries. For example, even after two thousand years of harsh beatings by the sea, a Roman harbor built with a mixture of standard concrete and volcanic ash is still intact in Pozzuoli Bay near Naples, Italy.[20]
The first floating city is expected to take to the water around 2020. Future cities built from scratch will be more dynamic, energy-efficient, and flexible. There is already research being done on ways to farm and harvest food and energy in deeper, more remote parts of the ocean. These cities of the sea could use algae for the production and storage of energy from wind and solar sources.[21]
The technical challenges are daunting enough, but the legal questions that seasteads would face, touched upon earlier, are no less tricky and call into question whether it would really be possible to create any kind of self-governing “mini-states” or “exo-states.”
Many seasteaders who want to cut ties with the mainland will have to build their settlements anywhere from twelve up to twenty-four nautical miles offshore and regulate some economic activities in a two-hundred-mile “exclusive economic zone.”[22] And a seastead tethered to a seabed (continental “land”) would not qualify. So those gambling on “gaming,” marijuana farms, prostitution, money laundering, and other dubious dealings prohibited on the mainland better give a second thought to disreputable and other piratical dealings at sea.
The United States, among other countries, asserts the right to extend its jurisdiction in matters affecting its citizens across the entire planet. And like any other seagoing structure, a seastead would be obliged to register with a “flag state” to whose maritime laws it would be subject.[23] If the United States disapproved of any hanky-panky aboard a seastead, it could lean on the community by getting physical but probably by first cutting off their banking, commerce, and supplies.
The Seasteading Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French Polynesia, creating a pathway for the first pilot project of floating islands governed under a “special governing framework.”[24] The vision of the Blue Frontiers is to facilitate the development of conscientious and balanced settlements at sea where humans can peacefully coexist with the environment and with each other. The deal with French Polynesia specifies two points the project must prove before it gets the green light from the government: whether it will benefit the local economy and whether it will be environmentally sound. The project plan is to use sheltered waters not out in the open ocean, because while it’s technologically possible, it is economically outrageous to go out to sea.[25]
If you need to build a structure—a hull, a breakwater, or even an entire island of your own—and you happen to live near salt water, you may soon be able to grow your own. The “homegrown” structure will be strong, durable, and should it ever fracture, it will be able to heal itself. The concept behind this is innovative and simple, and its plans are free.
Wolf Hilbertz, the originator of the concept, didn’t want it to be commercially exploited, so he didn’t file a patent. His tools were a pair of commercial garage battery chargers, some cable, and enough wire mesh fencing to make a pattern. He attached the cathodes (the charger clamps) to the wire mesh and found that minerals from the seawater (mainly calcium carbonate compounds—the same stuff as coral) were attracted onto the metal, making it look as if it had been dipped in molten glass and then, as it thickened, more like sprayed-on concrete.
Samples of the substance revealed that the material was able to withstand pressures of more than four thousand pounds per square inch, making it stronger than concrete but far lighter. Fish and other sea creatures, far from being repelled, were actually attracted to the mild electrical field too.
Hilbertz found that both the growth rate and the strength of the material could be regulated by adjusting the spacing of the anodes and cathodes and varying the density of the current. For power he used small, inexpensive wind plants for recharging the current.
This process could be used to construct buildings of any size, and the undersea supply of raw materials is estimated at about sixty quadrillion (that’s fifteen zeros) tons of minerals. A by-product is pure hydrogen gas that bubbles up from the project. Experiments suggest that it might be possible to collect the gas so that the hydrogen could be used in marine cities or piped ashore for the generation of energy.[26]
A Polish company, Deep Ocean Technology, thinks tourism is the way to make seasteading economical. It has signed deals and is planning for multiple underwater hotels. It is also designing and constructing the world’s largest underwater hotel planned for Dubai, with rooms both above and below the seabed.[27]
The Japanese are convinced that underwater cities could become a reality by 2030. A Japanese company’s Ocean Spiral is a design consisting of a two-and-a-half-mile-long spherical city that is five hundred meters in diameter, within which a tower accommodates homes and workspaces complete with all needed resources and transportation that would accommodate five thousand inhabitants.[28]
US Submarine Structures, a company that specializes in creating underwater facilities and buildings, is now offering a very particular service that will allow anyone with the money to live in a pressurized house that sits on the seabed at depths of around sixty feet. The houses contain two floors, more than three hundred square feet of space, two bedrooms, a lounge, dining room, and even special feeding mechanisms to attract wildlife, providing a beautiful marine view and fresh fish. The hitch is that this spectacular home comes at an equally spectacular price of around $10 million.[29]
Another example of an on-the-water habitat is EcoFloLife’s floating “WaterNest,” an ecofriendly oval house. The approximately 330-square-foot unit is made of 98 percent recycled materials. Skylights, balconies, and large windows encircle the dwelling, allowing for efficient lighting and beautiful waterfront views. Almost 200 square feet of photovoltaic panels are on the rooftop, providing electricity. A sophisticated system of natural microventilation and air conditioning classifies it as a low-energy-consumption residential habitat. The units can be positioned on rivers, lakes, bays, atolls, and calm sea areas. The interiors are pleasant and include a living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. The layout can be configured as a house (for one to four people) or as an office, lounge bar, restaurant, shop, or exhibition space.[30]
Architect Vincent Callebaut and colleagues have proposed 3D-printed underwater “oceanscrapers” made from rubbish removed from the ocean. The concept is intended to highlight the dwindling natural resources on land and the need to clean up the “disgusting soup of petroleum-based waste” created by dumping plastic in the ocean.
Callebaut’s domed marine structures measuring 1,640 inches in diameter would spiral down 3,280 feet from the surface and be designed to accommodate twenty thousand aquanauts. Food would come in the form of marine animals, seaweed, and farmed algae, while orchards and vegetable gardens would be grown on top of the domes.
The structures would be towed in prefabricated segments and then joined together and anchored at selected locations. Their internal construction would include floatation chambers that would render them practically unsinkable. They would be self-maintained and fully automated.[31]
DeltaSync has proposed a modular building strategy that would have movable parts. Its sea habitat would comprise interconnected spherical modules that could submerge during storms and float on the surface in good weather.
The habitat would be composed of modular platforms, either fifty-by-fifty-meter squares or pentagons with fifty-meter sides that could be arranged in branch-like structures. Concrete modules would support three-story buildings with terraces that could be used as residences, office and retail space, or hotels.[32] Sustainable features like hydroponic growing systems, biofuel production through floating algae, and protected fish and seafood habitats will result in “cyclical metabolism,” thus making the floating ecosystem altogether more logical.[33]
Future Living Report, a website showing what housing will be like in one hundred years, suggests that we’ll be living underwater because land space in urban areas will be in short supply or, worse, uninhabitable. There are those who see underwater living as a way of preserving our species in the event of an apocalyptic catastrophe, a kind of Noah’s Ark.[34]
At the turn of the millennium, many parts of the world could look dramatically different—perhaps even underwater—as ocean levels rise. Rather than fight a losing battle against the tide, some predict that we will give in and live a life on or under the water.
That’s the approach behind the Water-Scraper, the brainchild of architect and futurist Sarly Adre Sarkum. It is a futuristic, self-sufficient, floating city that looks a little like a giant jellyfish, a full-fledged underwater high-rise that harvests renewable energy, grows its own food, and even cultivates small forests on “green roofs.” The buildings are kept upright using a system of ballasts aided by a set of squid-like tentacles that grip the bottom and also generate kinetic energy.[35]
A proposed manta ray–shaped vessel, City of Meriens (in English, “oceanite”), the creation of renowned French architect Jacques Rougerie, is a colossal floating university. It is capable of carrying up to seven thousand students, researchers, and professors on a four-hundred-foot vessel that runs completely on renewable energy, producing no waste. The ship also sports aquaculture facilities and a hydroponic greenhouse to support food production.[36]
Another idea is Blueseed, a Silicon Valley–based start-up company and seasteading venture on a converted cruise liner. The project is stationed far enough outside of territorial waters to hire engineers and scientists without the government red tape of getting work visas for foreign scientists.[37] The project has been floating since February 2, 2019, and is carrying out plans for a world of more competitive governance and greater ocean environmental health.[38]
Shimizu, a Japanese corporation, and the University of Tokyo think that their technology for a submerged city will be ready within the next fifteen years, and the whole underwater world would take just five years to construct.
The “Ocean Spiral” could help coastal cities in the face of climate change and be completely sustainable with fish farms for food, a desalination plant for drinking water, and alternative forms of energy.
This structure, 1,500 feet in diameter, will be connected to a nine-mile-long path that winds through the sea toward a building located on the ocean floor, some 3,000–5,000 meters below the surface, containing houses, hotels, and business and commercial centers. It would also serve as a hub for scientists to mine natural resources and to examine possible ways to extract energy resources from the seabed.[39]
The Shimizu Corporation also claims we have lost touch with what’s really important and what truly makes us happy: healthy living, cultural pursuits, and contact with nature. It wants to reshape the cities of the future to help us reconnect with a healthy, happy lifestyle in an organic way. Its environmental city concept will have a waterbound base with a top that extends into the sky—overall resembling a natural plant. Residential space both at the waterfront and at the top of the tower will house forty thousand people per “island,” while the tower will provide enough commercial space for ten thousand people to work. Island communities will be joined together in modules, making it possible for entire self-sustaining, carbon-negative cities to be built from groups of the floating platforms.[40]
According to the Venus project’s creators, it’s an organization that proposes a feasible plan of action for social change, one that works toward a peaceful and sustainable global civilization. It outlines an alternative to strive toward, where human rights are no longer paper proclamations but a way of life.
A civilization comprising a global network of cities in the sea could easily accommodate many millions of people and relieve land-based population pressures. Some cities could also be used as a new resource for mining the relatively untapped resources of the oceans without disturbing their ecology. Still others might monitor and maintain environmental equilibrium and reclaim dangerous radioactive and other pollutant materials that have been dumped into the sea. Such systems could be used to cultivate and raise fish and other forms of marine life to help meet the nutritional needs of their communities’ people.
As in other innovative cities, some structures could be towed in prefabricated segments, joined together at selected locations, and anchored to the ocean floor.
A central dome or theme center would contain educational facilities, computerized communications, networking systems, and health and child care facilities. Three rings of buildings adjacent to the center would house the research facilities. There are also community centers for cultural activities, dining, and other amenities.
Eight residential districts would have a variety of unique, free-form architecture. Each home would contain gardens and would be isolated from other homes via landscaping. Indoor agricultural hydroponic, aeroponic, and aquaponic facilities and outdoor agricultural belts would be used to grow a wide variety of organic plants without the use of toxic chemicals. Areas would also be set aside for clean, renewable sources of energy such as wind generators, solar concentrators, and geothermal, photovoltaic, and other such systems.
Such prefabricated, modular homes are built of a new type of prestressed, reinforced concrete with a flexible ceramic external coating that would be relatively maintenance-free, fireproof, and impervious to the weather. Their thin-shell construction can be mass-produced in a matter of hours.[41]
Another of Vincent Callebaut’s concepts is to build a futuristic skyscraper city nearly a mile below the water’s surface. It calls for a series of domed buildings with 1,000 towers and 250 floors—all made from 3D-printed plastic from ocean waste—that would house 20,000 people. Its jellyfish-like geometry would allow it to remain unaffected by high currents, storms, earthquakes, and other natural water movements.
Bioluminescence would light the buildings. Underwater people would use gill masks (a device that extracts oxygen from water and dissipates carbon dioxide). It includes a transport system powered by seaweed.[42]
In the 1960s, futurist Buckminster Fuller and staff designed a floating city, Triton, a concept for an anchored floating city for one hundred thousand people that would be located just offshore and connected with bridges to the mainland. Its plans even included a geodesic ring of spherical modules. Fuller’s SubBiosphere2 would float in fair weather and then submerge whenever the seas became rough. The design was prepared for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.[43]
Blue Revolution Hawaii, a combined US and Japanese project, is another organization formed to educate the public about planning for a future with thousands of floating cities built with the resources from the ocean. According to its creators, the oceans offer the most opportunity as our next frontier. This program can be accomplished with one-tenth of the cost of the $150 billion International Space Station while developing sustainable resources and enhancing the environment.[44]
The proposed undersea city of Syph, in Australia, would evolve into a collection of living spaces with specialized functions like energy generation and sustainable food production working together.[45] Far from being impractical utopias, Syph as well as other undersea or floating cities could be every bit as integrated into global society as the ones we already have on land.
Apparently there are plenty of big, secondhand liners selling cheaply. Ship-shaped structures can pack in more apartments and office space for a given cost than other types of floating design, but they have a big drawback because of their tendency to roll in choppy seas. Cruise ships can sail around storms, but static seasteads need to be able to ride them out. And the stabilizers on big cruisers only work in moderate seas and when the ship is moving.
A full-service floating city already exists for residents of The World, a 644-foot yacht that continuously circles the planet. Launched in 2002, the ship contains 165 condominium spaces that sell for millions.
Nicknamed the Freedom Ship, the largest private residential ship on the planet is essentially a mile-long flat-bottomed barge with a high-rise building on top. Weighing three million tons and with a top speed of ten knots, the floating city would circle the globe every three years, stopping twelve miles offshore at each port for a week at a time. High-speed ferries would connect the forty thousand residents and twenty thousand crew members to the mainland and bring back visitors. “We won’t just be visiting those countries,” says Freedom Ship director and executive vice president Roger Gooch. “We anticipate those countries visiting us.”
The Freedom Ship’s size—and its $11 billion price tag and three-year construction process—stretches credulity. Too big for any existing shipyard to build, the ship must be constructed in pieces and—a familiar idea by now—towed out to be assembled at sea.[46]
A floating village at London’s Royal Docks has the official nod, and Rotterdam has a Rijnhaven waterfront development experiment well underway. Eventually, whole neighborhoods of water-threatened land could be given over to the seas. After decades of speculation and small-scale applications, the floating solution is finally enjoying political momentum—and serious investment.
Architect Kunlé Adeyemi proposes a series of A-frame floating houses to replace existing slums on waterfronts. As proof of concept, his team constructed a floating school for the community. Still, many buildings do not a city make: infrastructure remains a problem. One solution would be to use docking stations with centralized services, rather like hooking up a caravan to power, water, and drainage lines at a campground.[47]
Floating communities would allow people to continuously move around to take advantage of the best climates or to avoid serious storms.
Addressing energy is still in the planning stages for large structures. Sustainable future options include harnessing wave, tidal, and current action, or placing solar panels on surface barges.[48]
The heat locked in Earth’s vast oceans could generate useful energy—the basic thinking behind OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion). According to some estimates, there’s enough heat in the upper layers of the oceans to meet humankind’s energy needs hundreds of times over.[49]
The abundant wind and sun available at sea could power turbines, OTEC could harness the temperature difference between the surface and the depths—a process that also provides freshwater as a by-product—and CO2 could be captured from the surface and then converted into methane with the help of microbes called methanogens that could provide vast amounts of energy.[50] This power will be used to monitor life support systems with coordination from smart surface automation.
Fresh seafood is generally easy to come by in the ocean. Aquanauts could cultivate and raise fish and other forms of marine life and, in the future, help meet the nutritional needs of the world above. Supplying water would be no problem via desalination processes, including reverse osmosis.[51]
The drawbacks of current fish farming have created opportunities for technology. For example, floating “drifter pens” can replace stagnant ponds with GPS-tracked cages stitched out of copper wire to enable a constant inflow of fresh ocean water without losing the precious fish. Such geodesic aquariums will be let loose in swirling ocean gyres, where they will maintain a position so vessels can meet them and pick up their “harvested” goods.[52]
There is a lot of interest in deep-sea mining and exploration. The Chinese in particular have been investing in deep-sea expeditions to investigate the possibility of mining manganese nodules, rocks that contain nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, gold, and other valuable, rare earth minerals. And many marine biologists think that the best way to explore the ocean is by living there rather than visiting.[53]
The world’s first floating nation is planned for the Pacific Ocean by 2020, to be built by the nonprofit Seasteading Institute. The radical, futuristic plan, bankrolled by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, calls for an eventual floating nation with networks of hotels, homes, offices, restaurants, and more. The floating islands of the nation will feature aquaculture farms, health care, medical research facilities, and sustainable energy powerhouses. Cities will be built on a network of eleven rectangular and five-sided platforms so they can be rearranged according to inhabitants’ needs. The square and pentagonal platforms will measure 164 feet in length and they will have 164-foot-tall sides to protect buildings and residents.
The platforms, accommodating between 250 and 300 people, will be made from reinforced concrete and will support three-story buildings where apartments, terraces, offices, and hotels will be located. Hotels will have “green roofs” covered with vegetation. Construction will use local bamboo, coconut fiber, wood, and recycled metal and plastic and will last for up to one hundred years, according to the plans.
The Seasteading Institute hopes to “liberate humanity from politicians.” The radical plans call for networks of communities floating in international waters and operating within their own laws. The president of the Seasteading Institute has said he wants to see “thousands” of rogue floating cities by 2050, each of them “offering different ways of governance.” The institute hopes to raise around $60 million by 2020 to build a dozen buildings; ultimately a total of $167 million will be needed.[54]
Many of these structures and cities may serve as oceanographic universities whose efforts include maintaining the ecological balance of marine systems, maintaining sea farms that raise fish and other forms of marine life to help meet the nutritional needs of the world’s people, and cultivating marine life in general. Other anticipated prospects include mining the oceans without disturbing their ecosystems, monitoring and maintaining environmental equilibrium in general, and reclaiming dangerous radioactive and other materials that have been dumped into the sea.
The oceans are our birthplace, although we haven’t treated them as such. We should give a lot of thought to the idea that they may be one of our last refuges for survival on an increasingly hostile terra firma.
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