What If We Colonized The Ocean? | Unveiled

What If We Colonized the Ocean?

For the last century, outer space has been considered “the final frontier”. But when over 70% of Earth’s surface area is covered by water, perhaps there’s a whole other frontier entirely. The deep seas are ready and waiting for human habitation.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if we colonized the ocean?

Of course, the big question is: why would we WANT to colonize the ocean? All eyes are currently on space, and there’s more buzz around the idea of terraforming Mars than doing something easier first – like building on the moon or creating an orbital city. But the oceans are much more accessible; we don’t even have to leave our planet. Building in the sea would also help us prepare for living in space, since we’d have to overcome similar technological problems.

In both cases, we’d have to construct sealed, oxygenated living spaces insulated from the outside environment. One difference is that in space, extreme temperatures pose a major challenge; while in the ocean, the problem is extreme water pressure. Although Mars’s surface can reach 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the equator during summer, overnight this plummets to -100. The temperature of the ocean’s surface waters, on the other hand, varies from 28 to 97, with an average of about 63 – making it habitable with only a reliable heating system. Water pressure is certainly an issue though, and it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to build our underwater cities any deeper than 1,000 ft. At that depth, structures would already have to withstand about 30 atmospheres worth of pressure.

But this remains the only major obstacle, and we’ve already sent manned submersibles to depths of over 35,000 ft. An advanced underwater colony would only cost a fraction of what it would cost to colonize Mars. In fact, there are already designs in the works. In 2014, Japanese architectural firm Shimizu unveiled designs for underwater structures as part of their Ocean Spiral project. The projected costs are $26 billion - while the lowest costs for a Mars colony are $120 billion. It might also pay for itself much faster, through undersea tourism, mining opportunities, and the exportation of seafood. And it would certainly be a lot simpler to travel to and from. A short hop in a submarine is all it would take. Finally, it could also help us escape environmental disasters on land. In 2017, Stephen Hawking recommended that we colonize another planet within the next 100 years to escape extinction from challenges such as climate change. But taking to the seas could help with this too, at least in terms of flooding coastlines.

Of course, this isn’t to say that the ocean should be our plan A for ANY doomsday scenario. A big enough asteroid strike could boil the seas and make the whole planet unfit for life for a few million years. And even without an unexpected apocalypse, the seas have their own dangers. In some areas, ocean colonies would be at risk from underwater volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. We’d have to choose their location wisely; such as in parts of the Atlantic ocean that see minimal geological activity.

An underwater city would probably consist of biodomes, which incidentally is the same thing we envision for a space colony. In a worst-case scenario that there’s a malfunction, escaping would be easier than on another planet thanks to submarines and diving equipment. Unfortunately, these biodomes probably wouldn’t have any windows, except for maybe a few very thick portholes. Even then, without exterior lighting, you probably wouldn’t see much 1,000 feet down. Perhaps there could be viewing platforms with LEDs lighting up the seafloor. We’ve already done experiments to see whether humans are capable of living in undersea structures; famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau built the “Conshelf” stations, or Continental Shelf Stations, in the 1960s. Oceanauts were successfully supported for 30 days at a depth of over 30 ft.

However, large undersea structures aren’t the only type of ocean colonization possible. There’s another option that people have already been practicing for generations, which avoids the problem of water pressure entirely: floating cities. There are already communities living in small, floating villages in lakes and bays around the world, some in floating houses, some on islands made of reeds, and others in dwellings built on stilts. Such communities have inspired the idea of “seasteading” - a proposal to build floating settlements outside the purview of existing governments. We could have vast, advanced flotillas made of interconnected vessels, the size of cruise ships or aircraft carriers. These flotillas could even be entirely eco-friendly and use sails if sustainability was the aim rather than speed. Again, it’s a way to escape global warming induced flooding, as well as the planet’s warmer regions as they become uninhabitable.

The elephant in the room where ocean colonization is concerned, however, is the environmental impact. Those sceptical about this watery future bring up the greater risk of ocean pollution that comes with building a city on or under-water. The death blow to Cousteau’s Conshelf project was that he himself withdrew support, after deciding the Conshelfs were exploitative of the ocean and that his efforts were better spent on conservation. But, as with any human habitation, with the right mindset and motivation, clean living could still be achieved. As long as we approached any ocean colony with a focus on sustainability and ecological awareness, we could hopefully live without disrupting the sea too much. If anything, in a small and insulated community it would actually be easier to monitor pollution and waste disposal.

Perhaps we could even HELP the ocean. There’s no reason the large flotilla colonies of the future couldn’t double as vehicles for cleaning the ocean, sailing through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and picking up trash along the way. The waste produced by such colonies doesn’t have to find its way into the sea; onboard recycling plants could reprocess waste materials, and thermal hydrolysis could convert human waste into electricity and fertilizer. Being a sustainable city in the ocean isn’t actually that different to being a sustainable city on land, and because they would inevitably be much smaller, with an initially high population of scientists and researchers, it could actually prove easier.

Worries about sustainability certainly aren’t unfounded, however. There’s no guarantee that the companies responsible for the colonies will bear it in mind. The reliance of such a settlement on seafood could result in further overfishing, especially if seafood was a major export, damaging the ecosystems we should be trying to live peacefully within.

Of course, another problem is the potential psychological toll of living in such colonies long-term. For astronauts, isolation has always been a major issue and one reason why they don’t spend more than a few months in space. Underwater cities pose similar issues, in the sense that they’re also isolated, artificial environments. Sure, it’d be easy to get a break by just heading to the surface for a few days, but ideally you don’t want to have to take frequent breaks from your own home. Even a floating colony could get exhausting, spending weeks without seeing any land at all, and there are always those who can’t quite get their sea legs.

Life in the water may not be a utopia, it would be difficult and demanding, but for the increased living space and technology we could develop, colonizing our planet’s vast oceans could be a risk worth taking. And that’s what would happen if we colonized the ocean.