Do you have an appreciation of the ocean and are all about open-source?
Frits Stam
Some info on the project:
As I see it we (society) are very connected to the ocean, most of the everyday objects are in someway shipped across the ocean. Eventually ending up as plastic bits in the ocean.
Even before the Industrial Age we’ve been exploring the world with ships on the ocean. We’ve been shipping diseases, slaves, religion and tobacco around the world in small wooden ships.
The ocean also acts as the source of life, in other words, all of the creatures on land came from the ocean. The ocean provides us also with an import source of protein to feed the world; fish.
Furthermore, the ocean houses plankton that are critical for the planet. Most people don’t realize that a mouthful of seawater contains millions of bacterial cells, hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton and tens of thousands of zooplankton.
Although we have this strong connection with the ocean we have yet to explore 90% of it. In our ordinary lives we’ve been so disconnected of the environment around us, the only thing the majority of people see are the beaches, the endless blue, until of course, some oilrig blows up and washes oil up on the shore.
The project I am working on sees opportunity in creating a connection with society and the ocean somehow.
This is not an easy challenge, I cannot do this alone, I am asking a community of people that think outside the box, are hands-on and are compassioned about what they do for help.
Jay Woods
the lack of sedentary tasks that need to be done at sea. This should start
with the equivalent of farming and mining. Currently we seem to be limited to
transportation and hunting. Even the tasks that involve extracting some
element from the ocean is usually best done on a coast where the development
costs are smaller.
The key thing about farming is that it is a mechanism of economically
converting large amounts of diffuse solar energy to the concentration of needed
nutrients and materials whether it is rutabagas or timber. What is missing in
the ocean is large multicelled plants. Is it because there are no stable
regions where the plants will not be dispersed by wind and waves? If so this
is true over vast geologic time but not on shorter time scales. There is the
Sargasso Sea and the North Pacific Gyre, both stable on the scale of a million
years. There are large multicelled plants that tolerate salt water well such
as mangrove trees and sea grass. Both require shallow seas.
Perhaps a float technology equivalent to pumice would give them the foot hold
that they need to form a mat for stability and tall growth for (Why do trees
grow tall? Is it because we call them brush when they don't?)
Frits Stam
Op maandag 26 maart 2012 15:29:29 UTC+2 schreef Jay Woods het volgende:
Jay Woods
> Thanks Ray for your interesting take on this,
>
> I found a kind of international-ocean-station similar to the
> international-space-station:
> https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/www/ You (and other readers)
> should check out the video, it describes their plans to harvest and fish
> from the sea.
>
> My question would be; how would you think an open-source community could
> contribute to this? What are the tools,knowledge,platforms needed?
I think of this as a task in permaculture. In order to avoid a tremendous
genetic reshaping of a species, it will be necessary to put together a
community of synergistic organisms just so the mangroves can float and hold
together as an island mangal.
An example of a problem that can be tackled on its own is to increase the
range by cross breeding to include tolerance to near freezing conditions. This
could be done by moving genetic material from Acanthus to Avicennia. Since
this is between genera in the same family, it is like moving genetic material
from roses to apples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthaceae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthus_(genus)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicennia
Since this is a made up example (involving real genera), it is not likely to
be the best point of attack. It is also just one of 20 or so major problems
that would need to be solved before the mangal would float. With this problem
solved several times for different families in the mangal it would be possible
to have a diverse permaculture up the coasts into temperature climates. Since
I live in Nebraska, it won't be me. I'm having enough fun establishing true
breeding lines of apples and pears with good quality fruit without using
pesticides.
Nathan McCorkle
> Hi, my name is Frits, I'm a Dutch Industrial Design Master student in
> Eindhoven.
>
> I’m working on a project about making society more aware of the ocean. I'm
> looking for people to share ideas with me, this is why I am starting this
> discussion.
I guess I'll start by countering you, and asking, how do you know
there is a lack of connection to the ocean in societies? Which
societies are most unaware? Which societies are having the most
negative impact on the ocean? Which societies depend the most on the
ocean?
--
Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
Frits Stam
Nathan McCorkle
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:09 AM, Frits Stam <f.c....@student.tue.nl> wrote:
> Hi Nathan,
>
> Looking at the way we trash the ocean with plastic, eating all it's fish and
> still think that tropical rain forests are the lungs of the planet seems to
> me that we are in some way disconnected.
I guess my lack of knowledge shows how simple an understanding someone
can have... I'd love to hear more about the topics. Are you interested
in making a movie, or some other media?
> What I am currently interested in is the pollution and degradation of water
> quality close to cities that will eventually end up in the ocean.
>
> A couple of days ago I walked along the river 'de dommel' which goes
> straight through the city. (see: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dommel_(water
> gang) it's in Dutch but it has picture! :P ) They are actually cleaning the
> bed of the river because a lot of companies dumped zinc in it. I am looking
> in ways of collecting samples along the river and assessing the quality.
> While I was biking to the university I could see a purplish reflection on
> the water. I'm wondering how I can check the quality in some kind of way?
A spectrometer may help, know anyone that runs an FTIR?
Giovanni Lostumbo
Helena T.
here just what i wondered personally about your project:
you said that 'we' trash the oceans and eat all its fish, but there it' s necessary to have
definition of 'we' and 'us'. if you want to do research on society and its awareness of the ocean,
you need to know who the society is, i guess.
the main problem (just personal opinion) is that people become aware of problems when they
start to be affected by it, but most of the people don't live near the sea and if so even then they
don't necessarily live from it. It is a big issue how our society is built, we suffer from estrangement
from our own environment (not just the ocean), most people living on the continent (away from open water)
don't think about the fact that the fish they are eating was caught somewhere at the pacific and
shipped all that way. neither do we see the possibility that that plastic packaging which we don't recycle
might be the cause of an animal choking. we just don't know and care where our stuff comes from and
goes to! so in conclusion, it's mainly the industry polluting but it's the rest of the consumers allowing them to.
If you search for open-source ways to increase awareness, it is necessary to really get to that people.
As you said yourself that's really not easy, i know. and i'm not really convinced on how much power
open-source can have there, as people that use open-source are interested in the first place and know
about the problems we have (often exactly these people are very aware). so it would be good to find a way
to inform the rest, make them aware that it is their actions and behavior that causes trash and industrial
waste in the seas and rivers of which they are eating from again. awareness that their actions are not just
affecting their environment but that they depend and are affected by the environment (here the ocean) in turn
(people are too selfish to change for smth else when it doesn't affect themselves again, personal opinion
again).
yeah, i'm sorry that this is a real pessimistic point of view and i hope that it helped you at least a bit and i
understood what meant at all :/
hope you keep us informed as i myself study productdesign in germany and i'm really curious what it will
end up in.
kind regards,
helena
Phil
My first thought that comes to mind is the "Open ROV project, or a Open Sailing ROV." If the oceans are unexplored, perhaps a series of homemade robots that people can interact with could help to explore them. Of course, going to the really deep and far places might be out of the question (or not?). But having a series of small autonomous robots that can be controlled via satellite and takes pictures, clean up oil spills, etc. Send data out and create more complete maps of the continental shelves, or at least areas of interest (monitoring ecosystems, or taking pictures of the massive trash piles.)
Just a thought. Get others involved, increase knowledge of the ocean as well as human interaction with it.
Phil
On Monday, March 26, 2012 5:03:06 AM UTC-4, Frits Stam wrote:
John Griessen
> Hi Frits,
>
> <https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/protei/>."
"other versions may be designed in the future for other purposes : Protei for the North Pacific Plastic garbage patch, "
I like this ROV oil skimmer project. The design could be engineered to be rapidly producible so they could be made in
quantities after a spill happens, since it's not likely we are going to get oil companies stocking thousands
of them in advance:-)
Nathan McCorkle
> I like this ROV oil skimmer project. The design could be engineered to be
> rapidly producible so they could be made in
> quantities after a spill happens, since it's not likely we are going to get
> oil companies stocking thousands
> of them in advance:-)
>
That last sentence may not hold, if the robots proved useful and
effective, it might lower the risk of drilling or transport in some
areas. I know BP has said they want phylogenetic classification of oil
consumers (bacteria, etc) in the waters around the world, so they can
better assess the outcome of an accident.
Nathan McCorkle
of oil consumers done
Giovanni Lostumbo
When you mentioned deep and far places, I was reminded of GreenPeace's use of UAVs to monitor whaling activities as far as Antarctica. http://en.wikinoticia.com/Technology/general-technology/104601-greenpeace-used-drones-to-track-japanese-whalers-on-the-high-seas
Giovanni Lostumbo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter#Early_work
Phylogenetic classification of consumers is definitely happening- for example JCVI/Celera is bioprospecting the ocean with GOS and CAMERA; their Synthetic Genomics researches biofuels and collaborates with Exxon Mobil.
On Thursday, April 5, 2012 3:51:26 PM UTC-4, Nathan McCorkle wrote:
Err. maybe phylogenetic wasn't appropriate... but they want a survey
of oil consumers done
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Nathan McCorkle <> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 3:28 PM, John Griessen <> wrote:
>> I like this ROV oil skimmer project. The design could be engineered to be
>> rapidly producible so they could be made in
>> quantities after a spill happens, since it's not likely we are going to get
>> oil companies stocking thousands
>> of them in advance:-)
>>
>
> That last sentence may not hold, if the robots proved useful and
> effective, it might lower the risk of drilling or transport in some
> areas. I know BP has said they want phylogenetic classification of oil
> consumers (bacteria, etc) in the waters around the world, so they can
> better assess the outcome of an accident.
>
> --
> Nathan McCorkle
> Rochester Institute of Technology
> College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics
Frits Stam
Op woensdag 4 april 2012 14:25:50 UTC+2 schreef Nathan McCorkle het volgende:
Frits Stam
There is a big chance that when you were still a kid your parents or friends made you believe that by putting a seashell next to your ear you could hear the ocean. The seashell concept was inspired by this. The concept involves augmenting the natural ocean-like sound with a soundscape created by oceanic data. The accessibility and playfulness of the concept would lead to more awareness on what’s going on in the oceans.
I would love to hear what you think and how you see this.
Questions I still have for myself:
- How on earth can I put a speaker in a tiny shell? :P
- What data is relevant, how do I communicate this and make it understandable and relevant to an audience?
- How could a user 'tune-in' to whatever information he likes to hear? how would they explore the device?
- What action would a seashell imply? What else could you do with it apart from listening?
- Could the product be 're-cycled' by ripping electronics from it and throwing it in the ocean?
- Could people maybe take a sample with the seashell or something?
- What happens if the seashells would be 3d printed and that the texture, color and shape is determined by other oceanic data?
Picture:
Op donderdag 5 april 2012 12:22:15 UTC+2 schreef Helena T. het volgende:
Frits Stam
Op donderdag 5 april 2012 20:19:48 UTC+2 schreef Phil het volgende:
Frits Stam
Op donderdag 5 april 2012 20:19:48 UTC+2 schreef Phil het volgende:
Hi Frits,