underseacolony.com : A Real Undersea Colony

Hello William and fellow spacesettlers,
In Marshall Savage's "The Millennial Project" combination habitats where to eventually move out to the deeper oceans where they would eventually increase the productivity of ocean zones nearly devoid of algae. He refers to these regions as "oceanic deserts". In the book Savage mentions that one of the side benefits of using OTEC power production is that bringing up cold nutrient rich water from the depths of the ocean would increase the productivity of these ocean deserts. So in a sense you are creating new habitats for life.

At the risk of stretching an analogy to far wouldn't that be like making the desert regions of Palestine bloom?

Best Regards,

Alex

From: William
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 5:14 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: underseacolony.com : A Real Undersea Colony

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "William" wrote:
>
> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, joe@ wrote:
> > Yeech. I certainly hope that doesn't happen! We're doing quite
> > enough damage to the ocean ecosystems just from the surface; I
> > shudder to think what would happen if we actually started
> > inhabiting them in large numbers.
>
> I couldn't agree more. One of the main reasons I'm an advocate of
> space exploration and settlement, and a member of this list, is: no
> pre-existing biospheres to lay waste to. (As far as we currently
> know.)

I suppose that some sort of *small-scale* ocean settlement could
occur, for this reason: man-made structures in shallow waters, and
on the ocean surface, are quite often places that are teeming with
fish and other life. They use these structures as places to shelter
or anchor themselves from ocean currents, and so sea-life communities
build up around them. There could be "homes" out on these places that
could double as seafood farms. Marshall Savage in "The Millenial
Project" talked about these sort of combination habitats.

This is not the deep ocean bottom, though. This is the far smaller
amount of area near coastlines or on the continental shelfs. Or, on
the ocean surface.