Revive the Ocean

Mysterious language, crying for help. Meeting in their world, interactive materials and biology; dead spots, rebuilding communities above-below the water.

Things are heating up and dying off above and below the water line. If it continues, species will interact with each other in a not friendly way. Carbon dioxide buildup, ocean acidification, carbonation of the water, oxygen loss, glacial melts, and fish population changes are just some of the implications that are manifesting. Unless we address this, these problems will multiply for coastal communities and for the natural world. We depend on fish, and now fish depend on us to survive.

Two billion people rely on fish to live. Coastal communities are intimately connected to what happens below the water line. Change in ocean temperature can cause fish migration, fish depletion, fish overabundance, that may be a short term gain for some communities, but a current and long term loss for everyone else.

Here’s our plan: Combining biodiversity, programmable protocell smart material robotics, and art to create a domed unit that will recreate a mobile ‘coral reef’ (region specific) that can sustain, protect, and grow underwater habitats. Our Dome will be grown from protocells (chemicals with life-like properties like lipid membranes), acting as a “carbon sink” to create a safe haven for an oxygen rich zone and increase the pH (to become more basic); where fish and marine life could bloom. In other words, the protocell used in the dome is a life-like matter from synthesized chemicals engineered to behave like organic microorganisms. We will integrate bioluminescence into our structure to attract indigenous fish to repopulate our communities.

The Purposes of Our Domed Units:

TO MITIGATE GLOBAL WARMING

1) Increase oxygen levels

2) Harness bioluminescence to attract fish

3) Increase pH levels of the water to reduce ocean acidification through lessening the amount of carbonate (weak acid) in the ocean

4) Decrease CO2 levels in the air and water

TO ENHANCE HUMAN LIFE

5) To save the economic lifeblood of coastal communities

6) To protect coastal communities from climatic and geographical instability

MARINE LIFE SUSTAINABILITY

7) To revitalize ocean dead spots

Our domed unit will be region-specific, taking in the factors of geophysics, meteorology, oceanography, and climate change for places such as Iceland, India, China, and the USA. Against increased wave activity which will come with global warming, our dome unit will provide a coral reef-like barrier to protect coastal barriers.

Human languages are disappearing, and with them disappears music, song, history, culture, and memory. The world grows more silent. Now another kind of language is on the verge of extinction.  We’ve heard its mysterious cry for help, its song manifesting in dead spots all around the world, from Chile to the Middle East. We want to sing this song too, so it is heard and fixed. We are learning its composition, its melody through the layers of water. This story needs to be told, and now. Because a world without language is a world without life.

Please find us at http://www.revivetheocean.org/.

Our protocell is a new technology that can sense degradation of ocean habitats, and also revitalize and renew oxygen levels, which will attract marine flora. With the neutralization of carbonate, shellfish will be able to express their important functions and life spans within ecosystems. Our dome is region-specific and in its’ fullness, can become a permanently implanted coral reef village.

We need a symbiosis between robotics and nature so that they work not in competition, but in support of each other. The Earth has a natural cycle of healing, but dead zones have eroded and destroyed this natural way to heal. Intervention is required, so that the normal patterns of Earth’s health can begin again, using our living system robotics as a lightning rod. Our technology will have an understanding of nature’s rhythm and necessities, culminating in a technology able to listen to the song of the ocean and respond in the correct way, enabling that song to continue.

We will plant our domed units in different locations (Iceland, New Jersey, India, China) to revitalize actual dead spots and target future problem areas. Gathering data from different regions, we will predict which areas are in danger. This would enable the domed unit to prevent the formation of dead zones, as well as revive them. We are first detecting the problem, recording the problem, and then solving the problem with a single unit.

Fish means food. Oxygen means life. Our protocell, custom-designed for different temperatures, pH’s, organisms, and regions will become villages -- in three to five years, deployable and part of global marine health and governmental sustainability projects. The impact will touch billions and will reach on into the future. Our non-invasive, symbiotic protocell will become part of the architectural fabric of the earth- as a tree, as a flower, as nature. Oceans touch all coastlines and acidification does not respect borders, so our scale is global. We will be there where water touches earth, to continue the breath of life.

We will use our connections with marine corporations such as Wilhelmsen and KONGSBERG to “cast a wider net.” Backing by companies and governmental research groups will help us reach more ‘“beni-fish-iaries.” Public and private institutions are involved with ocean health and can help us implant protocells worldwide. A collaborative effort is needed. Utilizing autonomous underwater vehicles that retrieve and transmit data to ‘keep watch’ over our protocells, efficiency will be maintained. Our protocell is open-source technology offered to all communities, from small coastal villages to massive cities like Shanghai- everywhere communities are dependent on fish and water health for survival.

We serve billions with our solution, from the small Icelandic fishermen to the Tokyo sushi chef. We aren’t just helping coastal communities- we are aiding everyone who eats fish and everyone who needs clean water. We are building bridges between Spain and Iceland, for as the planet warms, migration patterns change, threatening indigenous fish populations. Some areas win, and some lose. We are a global peaceful army, fish for everybody is our motto. Divided, we can’t fish. We are there at their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We are fillets, we are smoked salmon, we are eel and Icelandic haddock.

In 12 months, we will be fishing for carbon. Depending on how our catch is, we will either stay and place permanent protocells, or move to different areas. We will retrieve beginning data points in a local experiment with global implications. In three years, we will have four implanted protocell villages revitalizing dead zones and at-risk areas. Others will beg, borrow, and steal our domed unit, and ‘plant’ in oceans, freshwater lakes, and rivers. In three years we will exhibit in major cities, demonstrating how robotics and nature interact harmoniously; an integrative living system as natural as clean water.

We have Sara Hansson, who has had 4 years of experience working in laboratories and with overseas colleagues with the Junior Academy on the world’s environmental problems. She has researched the impact of fish migration on coastal communities, “dead spots” in coral reefs, the effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on fish in Japan, and how excess carbon dioxide affects marine organisms. Anna Hansson, Om Deshmukh, Simon Li, and Sindhu Yaramosu and Jordan Sadan have pooled together their art and engineering skills to create a working model of a technology that will change the ocean dynamics back to the positive.

You need a viable planet to make a profit. That’s our first goal. Our protocell dome will be open-sourced, and we hope everyone steals and duplicates it. Later, when our protocell becomes a village underneath the water, we will patent this and sell the village models as a for-profit business. But first and foremost, this issue has to be solved. The spirit behind our collaboration is to solve, to share, to fix, and to revive the ocean. We will incorporate new developments regarding graphene, fish migratory patterns, and NASA satellite data into our domes. We will be continually involved in marine research, robotic and engineering research in order to combine and maximize the potential of these emerging fields. We would like to see the unit in freshwater rivers, lakes, in city water reservoirs, and on planets such as Mars, where oxygen is needed.

MIT Solve can help us revive ocean dead spots and prevent new ones from forming. We have found the problem. We have posited and built a solution. The next step is to amplify it on a bigger platform- so that we get our Domes into the water, in Iceland, India, China, and New Jersey. Solve can link us to a fusion of engineers, biologists, smart materials specialists, entrepreneurs, where we can test a larger and larger protocell dome village so that we can have the biggest impact we can. We welcome an enormous, predatory corporate or academic takeover.

Without world-wide awareness, we will be watching cat videos as shorelines disintegrate and fish move away, and we die away. We need to generate clickbait. Cat videos are cute, but 300 million hits are disproportionate to a video from Columbia University regarding ways to solve climate change that has under 200 views. We need 300 million hits on our Youtube channel (http://revivetheocean.org) so that we attract people to help. We need an army of innovators. We need musicians, artists, engineers, chemists, biologists… Or we will be only a potentiality as a species. Solve can give us the platform.