
Journey into the World’s First Underwater Farm - thecosas
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/are-there-underwater-farms
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anonu
Not what I was expecting at all. I was expecting something more akin to kelp
farming as recently described on a 60 Minutes episode:
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaweed-farming-and-its-
surpris...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaweed-farming-and-its-surprising-
benefits/)

Growing conventional crops underwater seems like a non-starter idea if you
need to create a walled-off environment for them to grow. What makes more
sense is to find plants that can grow in salty water and feed off the natural
environment.

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peterlk
> During winter months or cloudy days, artificial light from LED lamps placed
> inside the spheres supplements the natural light

I have also wondered about living under water and farming there. However, this
made me cringe. I'd like to see less interference/pollution in the ocean, not
more. Especially as the owner of a dive shop, I would expect some more
reverence for marine life.

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tomkat0789
I wonder if this holds lessons for farming in space? They're both rather
closed environments, though the sea obviously provides extra water (and more).
There won't be cloudy days in space!

For those worried about negative environmental effects of structures on the
seafloor, people actually sink old ships to create artificial reefs:
[https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/artificial-
reef.html](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/artificial-reef.html)

Though if this was industrialized too much, I bet delivering a bunch of
chemical fertilizers probably would create environmental problems.

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totoglazer
Obviously not useful to grow land plants in these sorts of domes for useful
crop yields in general. Ignoring the complexity and cost, at 22 feet you've
lost most of the red spectrum and are starting to lose orange and yellow.
That's a big penalty on the available energy. Maaaaybe for some weird pharma
thing?

However it's probably(?) a pretty interesting and cheap experiment area.

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billybolton
It is useful, you don't need to worry about insects and infectious diseases.
Most pesticides are damaging to the surrounding ecology. Moreover, with the
way industrial farming is currently done, most plants are genetically similar
to each other. This means that if a bacterial outbreak were to occur, it could
potentially wipe out many crops. In an enclosed environment, you eliminate
these things. Although, you could still do it in a green house.

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ChuckMcM
As a question, "can we grow land plants under water?" I think it is
interesting, as a strategy for increasing the availability of arable land? I'm
not convinced.

That said, if you can get enough plants to provide oxygen recycling of CO2 in
the habitat, then at a larger scale you might be a solution to one of the
problems of long duration underwater habitats.

