I'd like to be under the sea, in the octopus's garden with strawberries

July 4, 2015 11:04 AM

It's hard to be a plant, trying to grow in one location while faced with excessive temperatures, wind and pests, and getting enough water to survive. An Italian family with an extensive history of making diving equipment came up with an idea to address these challenges: grow plants in the ocean. The result are a series of submerged glass domes with plants and sensors, called Nemo's Garden, where they are currently growing a number of plants, such as basil, lettuce, strawberries and beans. You can watch a live stream and view the collected data in realtime, and see more videos from the Ocean Reef Group on YouTube.

Here's a longer presentation on Nemo's Gardens, with footage of the setup and growing plants, but the narration is in Italian. You can enable auto-generated subtitles, which can be automatically translated to English or other languages.

posted by filthy light thief (15 comments total)

Between stuff like this, the advances in virtual reality, the continuing trend toward government by corporation, and the increasing exhortations I've seen to start eating bugs (one in this very article!) it's downright alarming how quickly we all settled on "distopian cyberpunk future" and how hard we are all working on bringing it about.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:20 AM on July 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Given how unpredictable and extreme climate will become, I'm really interested in the possibility of this developing into something large scale. I wonder if it can be done without horrible impacts on coastal ecosystems?
posted by congen at 11:23 AM on July 4, 2015

I imagine a tethered circle of plant pods being attached to a harvesting platform in deep ocean, getting harvested and replanted and sent back out on a loop big enough that the transit time sees seedlings go out one end and ready to harvest plants come in the other. Power the whole thing with wind/tidal energy.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:27 AM on July 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

In addition to the obviously limited scale that will ever be possible for this and the obvious local impacts on the the marine ecosystems, light attenuation means that submerged agriculture would always be less productive than ordinary agriculture because these plants will be much more light limited. Indeed, land plants likely were so much more successful evolutionarily than aquatic photosynthetic organisms because they have so much more access to light.

There is no shortage of CO₂ on land--we actually have too much, as you might have heard. Most plants have adaptations that mean that they are already working at their maximum ability to absorb CO₂ under ordinary terrestrial conditions. The vast majority of land plants can't use salt water, so I'm not sure how a submerged dome in an ocean solves their water needs. Yes, it will control for temperature. But at the expense of lots of other things that plants need to be alive.

It reminds me a lot of the "15 year old kid who has solved the ocean plastic problems" nonsense that was going around a few weeks ago. Actually consulting marine ecologists before you propose large-scale marine projects should be obvious.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:37 AM on July 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

I do not know much about the ocean, but would something close enough to the surface to get good light be really vulnerable to damage by waves?
posted by congen at 11:40 AM on July 4, 2015

The article says they're growing to harvest within four months because of the situation with permits. This is basically a raised bed in a greenhouse, and the science bit is the air filter.

Would this work somewhere like Alaska or on small islands? Places where bringing in fresh vegetables add a huge financial mark-up, but there is a short growing season or not enough arable land. That'd be very very useful.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:04 PM on July 4, 2015

This'd would absolutely not work in Alaska, since light attenuation is way, way worse because of the amount of plankton in the water. Summer, when there's the most light, is also when there's the most plankton, since the phytoplankton likes light just as much as the plants.
posted by fnerg at 5:59 PM on July 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Gardening in Alaska is interesting, and it has its own Wikipedia page and dedicated website with plenty of information and tips. But in the promotional video, the (cartoon) example is a more arid, desert climate that is also near an ocean. In fact, Gizmag details the region of Liguria in Northern Italy, which is known to be especially poor for farming. This is where Sergio Gamberini and his son Luca set up their Nemo's Gardens. That article also notes they started in 2012, and their first crop of basil was found to have "no significant difference compared to land-grown basil, except the underwater variety appears to be noticeably stronger in flavor."

I'm not sure how a submerged dome in an ocean solves their water needs.

The idea is that the shape of the greenhouses allows for water to constantly evaporate and replenish the plants. So far, it's worked well enough to grow some initial crops, but I'm not saying this is a miracle or even a great idea. I thought it was neat, and it would be fun to see a longer experiment run and written up as compared to alternative planting options in regions around the world.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:27 PM on July 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

The water seems to evaporate and then condense on the glass, meaning it's fresh water.
posted by gryftir at 1:14 AM on July 5, 2015

So it's a greenhouse.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:47 AM on July 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Echoing previous comments, this is phenomenally impractical, and it is odd to read an article in the wapo taking it seriously. I do award it points for looking cool.
posted by snofoam at 6:25 AM on July 5, 2015

I wonder about its impracticality, as compared to setting up a greenhouse on the surrounding land, or terracing the hills as the people of the area currently do. So far, I haven't found any really good write-ups of that sort.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:50 AM on July 5, 2015

It's a greenhouse with no climate control or pesticide issues. I would wonder about mould and fungi though, but the temperature part is interesting.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:25 AM on July 5, 2015

This is phenomenally impractical, but this IS the kind of project researchers will need to gain experience with in order to developed closed ecological systems. Manned, deep-space travel is far away, but when we can do things like this we'll be a lot closer. But yeah, super silly when we already have a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and nutritious regolith to work with.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 5:09 PM on July 5, 2015

Ecologists do plenty of work with enclosed ecosystems--we call them microcosms or mesocosms depending on the size. NASA has had ecologists working on problems along these lines for decades.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:48 PM on July 5, 2015