Arthur C. Clarke's "The Deep Range"

All of this talk about climate, and bluefin tuna, and algae biofuels being grown in the ocean (see below) made me remember a book I read as a kid: The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote in 1957; I read it in the 1960s. I actually read the edition shown here:




Clarke has always been credited with a lot of foresight as a sci-fi writer: The Deep Range showed off this skill. He anticipated a different direction for whales than has actually happened; he figured the best way to deal with whaling would be to raise them and harvest them as farm animals. Amazingly enough, this industry runs into a vegan roadblock, a Buddhist leader who opposes cruelty to animals (much like Greenpeace, Sea Shepherds, and PETA).

But there's more in the book. Clarke anticipated small manned deep-sea submersibles -- Cousteau may have had his in the development stage (the first one dove in 1959), but there weren't many others in 1957; farming of the oceans, as the whales feed on nutrient-augmented plankton farms; large-scale fish farming; the need for expanded agri- and aqua-culture to feed a growing world population; even mining the oceans (though Clarke's idea of getting it from seawater isn't as economic as dredging defunct hydrothermal vents).

It even anticipated Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter becoming an undersea aquanaut on Sealab -- the hero of The Deep Range is a former astronaut with a fear of wide-open spaces, which isn't conducive to a job in the depths of space.

One thing that Clarke does have in this book (which we could use) is an effective world government -- and ocean governance. Without it, we're stuck with the overfished and overexploited oceans and fisheries that we see today. (As well as the climate treaty mess in Copenhagen.)

Now, as might be seen by looking around where I've judiciously commented on the Web, I'm no fan of geo-engineering, particularly ocean fertilization. But what might work is better use of the oceans, such as using spherical pelagic fish cages, fertilization of the Southern Ocean to augment krill (which could be under some pressure from phytoplankton) and expanded fish hatcheries for some species for which that reproductive mode would work. We could have a real version of The Deep Range -- provided we had enhanced management and a global vision. That's hard to come by these days.

Links:
Algae biofuel farm (sponsored by NASA)

Robotic offshore fish cage

Robotic offshore fish cage, link 2

Cousteau diving saucer