Ocean living and our human race destiny
By: Sang Ching
Tags: Planets, Oceans, Futuristic, Living, Construction

Our Ocean covers more than 70 percent of the surface of our planet and 97% of the earths water’s are in the ocean. I have been always asking myself why we humans haven’t started to colonize the Ocean? Many people will think, living in the ocean is a crazy and dangerous idea! It’s expensive to put the structural infrastructure together in the middle of nowhere in Ocean. However, we have polluted our ocean water so much without living in the Ocean,So it’s not hard to imagine what could happen If we start living in the ocean.

Life on the sea has been one of mankind’s enduring visions, but the technology hasn’t been up to the task…

Does this sound too futuristic? China’s Fujian Province, where the Tanka people have been settled at sea since 700AD. Today, some 7,000 Tankas still maintain a sea farming life — possibly a preview of a future to come for many more of us for Ocean living. Bede a nomadic ethnic group in Bangladesh known as a water gypsy live, travel, and earn their living on the river. So we do see a great potential living in the ocean water but we haven’t got to the point where we can entirely emerge the technology to create a sustainable Ocean living without hampering the wild life creatures in water. We see signs that a “blue revolution” in ocean harvesting technology is underway, suggesting floating cities can’t be far off.

British designer Phil Pauley has developed a concept for a sea habitat comprising interconnected spherical modules that could submerge during storms and rest at the surface in good weather. The long vertical trusses holding up Pauley’s design use Fuller’s principles for strong, lightweight “tensegrity” structures. They maximise support without using too much expensive material such as steel. To reach much deeper waters, communities will ditch the stilts and float freely or anchor.

The modules use famed designer Buckminster Fuller’s idea of tensegrity making strong but lightweight structures that use little in the way of steel

Others are trying to investigate this technique on a smaller scale too. Do-it-yourself sea-living enthusiast Vince Cate has been using prototyping simple “ball stead” homes, which achieve buoyancy and stable surface “real estate.” Testing models in the Caribbean Sea, near his home in Anguilla, Cate has found that suspending a heavy weight well below the surface keeps the ball from moving amid the waves.

And these structures could last for a very long time indeed. Simple cement structures, reinforced with steel, can displace massive amounts of water, and last for decades — or even centuries. Even after 2,000 years of the sea’s harsh beating, a Roman harbour built with a mixture of standard concrete and volcanic ash is still intact. Electro-accretion — essentially sticking concrete-like minerals on galvanized underwater structures — means electrified steel mesh could eventually be used to reinforce and repair underwater concrete structures.

The picture must become the reality sooner or later for the human race to achieve its longed- for becoming ocean living citizen goals. The technology of the physical realm, a product of the Tree of Knowledge, will have to merge and form a synthesis with that other as yet neglected half of the world, the cosmic tree of life.

Question to you All: Have we progressed far enough to achieve this without doing further harm to Ocean’s natural ecosystem?

Courtesy: BBC Future Article, Phill Pauley’s design concept

Source of inspiration book: Water- The Element of life