With droughts, record-breaking fires, a global pandemic, stronger hurricanes each new season, and endless heat waves, the planet is in need of major ideas and sustainable innovations. One of those innovations must fulfill our need to replace fossil fuels.
For surfers, it’s common to turn to the ocean for relief. Ironically, that’s the very place one of our greatest hopes lies for sustainable innovation: Brian and Cindy Wilcox formed Marine BioEnergy, Inc.with a plan to turn open-ocean farmed kelp into fuel. Working with researchers from the University of Southern California, the open-ocean farm concept is currently being tested in the waters off Catalina Island. The effort is funded by the U.S. Dept of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).”
Previously, Brian worked for 38 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. on robotic missions exploring the outer planets. And it was Brian’s father, Howard Wilcox, who came up with the idea that kelp could be farmed for fuel. Howard’s original idea would require upwelling to harvest the kelp’s nutrients needed for fuel, but Brian realized that a system of underwater drones (utilizing his background in robotics) could actually bring the kelp to the nutrients instead.
“My father started working on ocean kelp farming in the 1970s,” Brian says. “He was a civilian scientist working for the U.S. Navy. During the oil embargoes of the 1970s, the U.S. Navy was very concerned about being able to continue to operate when there were lines around the block to fill your car. There was a significant chance that the Middle East would not sell petroleum to the U.S. or Europe ever again and if that would have happened the U. S. Navy was concerned they would not be able to operate. So my father studied the problem and came up with the solution of growing kelp in the middle of the ocean as a last untapped resource.”
The problem with growing kelp in the middle of the ocean is there are no nutrients in the ocean’s top layer, which brings us back to Howard Wilcox’s concept of upwelling nutrients from the deeper layer below. This can present many challenges though if done on a large scale, completely disrupting the natural cycles of the ocean.
To Brian, a much simpler solution was to take the kelp down to the nutrients at night and back up to the sunlight during the day. In the video above, I meet with Brian and Cindy as they explain the idea behind their kelp farm and their progress so far with the project.
