The mobile "line sniffing" harvesting head could perhaps squash the sargassum (e.g. using counter-rotating rolls touching each other at the water surface), which would burst most of the little gas bags serving as floats for the weed, allowing a slow water current pumped in from the land station to transport the now zero flotation harvest through the sea line to the processing plant. The sea line could be assorted with a power line bringing electric power to the Eye roaming harvesting head, which could alternatively draw its power from said water current powered by the land station.
Our original (at least wrt the patent I posted) scheme of not seeding where we harvest (at the Eye), but rather upstream at the outskirts of the Gyre, and advantageously one full turn upstream, in the Gulf Stream somewhere between Bermuda and the US coast for the case of the NA Gyre, turns out to be particularly judicious as nutrients naturally rise from the depths there (upwelling phenomenon): http://earth.usc.edu/~slund/systems/topic4.html : ------------------- "As currents move north as western boundary currents or south as eastern boundary currents (in the northern hemisphere), they are deflected by the Coriolis force toward the open ocean. This allows deeper water to rise to the ocean surface to replace it producing upwelling. This can also occur if there are strong prevailing winds blowing from the continent toward the ocean." "Thermohaline circulation primarily affects water in the deep oceans below the zone of surface ocean circulation. It produces nutrient-rich waters that rise to the surface during upwelling." "The surface water is thickest in the central ocean gyres like the Sargasso Sea. The central gyres are warm, saline, low-nutrient waters with low biological productivity." ------------------ Also of course, as already mentioned, seeding at the outskirt one full turn ahead allows benefiting from the largest possible sunlight and CO2 collecting growing area, while making the system as compact as possible and thus doable with a pair of relatively short (~500 km each?) sea lines, which could be suspended from floats at say 100m depth as discussed before, and could be relatively rigid except the last say 100 km of the harvesting one, which need to be flexible for mobility within the Eye area. Things seem to be falling into place nicely, could this indicate this gigantic terraforming (well, aquaforming) enterprise might actually make sense? Michel P.S. Anyone knows why the latitudes at which we would be harvesting (30-35°) are called the Horse Latitudes? ----- Original Message ----- From: Michel Jullian To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 1:14 PM Subject: [Vo]:Re: Eye of the Gyre It occurred to me that lateral motion capability of the robotic head of the midwater submerged harvesting sea line (remember the giant worms in "Dune"? ;) would be a good thing anyway, as it would allow "snorting the lines" of sargassum, as this seaweed self-organizes in linear "slicks" as seen on these photos: http://www.physorg.com/news100350969.html http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070606113421.htm Above photos are in Gulf of Mexico, the only satellite view of sargassum in the Sargasso Sea I have found for now is this detail view of an eddy in the gulf stream: http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=347712 Pointers to wide view photos (sat or aerial) of the weed in the Eye area would be welcome. Michel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin van Spaandonk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 1:55 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Eye of the Gyre In reply to Michel Jullian's message of Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:58:17 +0200: Hi, [snip] >Good point Richard, neither would I, nor would any robotic platform... Maybe >we could envisage sufficient flexibility in the mooring scheme (maybe some >kind of semi-dynamic mooring, static most of the time, dynamic=motorized when >needed) to move out of the way of the hurricane? [snip] It just needs to be submerged enough to get it out of the way. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
