The folks at dive equipment manufacturer Ocean Reef Group are close to setting up a KickStarter campaign to raise funds for “Nemo’s Garden,” a way to grow land-based vegetables and plants underwater.
The idea, according to Ocean Reef Group‘s Sergio Gamberini, is to build small, transparent balloons and sink them. Once underwater, they would be filled with air and anchored to the sea floor. A vase would then be placed inside and seeds planted.
Gamberini wants to use the properties of large bodies of water — constant temperature as well as the natural evaporation of a surface of liquid in contact with an air space to try creating an underwater greenhouse.
After two years of trial and error, construction on an experimental site is scheduled to begin during the first half of this month. Gamberini wants to build more biospheres, improve their designs, add sensors and cabling, etc.
“This year (2015) we draw the line for feasibility, industrialization, large scale production to really give an alternative solution to grow food in a responsible, small-footprint-on-earth kind of way,” he says.
For more info, check out their website here, and check out their crowdfunding video below.
