I was watching this video, and the first thing that came to mind is how interesting it would be to the solarpunk community. It’s the story of a professor and his efforts to make a “cybertecture” island by getting coral reefs to grow on-demand.
This is actually a long known technique and it currently being trailed for creating artificial coral reefs. The corals themselves also seem to have an easier time growing if assisted by electricity.
If I understand the video correctly, the professor in question is the one who created the technique and and is behind the coral reef-building, but his ultimate goal was to create entire artificial islands using it, which could act as cybertecture cities at sea.
“One man’s wild dream.” Bleh. Flowery words for yet another bunk propertarian sea-steading project. I mean, he was literally planning to mine the shit out of the ocean floor and sell away more of the ecosystem to the capitalist market in order to create his Utopia. At least there was some acknowledgment of that at the very end.
Very glad the opportunistic scientific exploration happened along with it, though.
I wonder if creating corals this way would be a good way to sequester carbon
Is it just me or did he miss out on the fact there is no water above the ocean. How could it ever grow above the ocean?
