Alyson Myers, Fearless Fund
We start a project under contract to DOE ARPA-E (MARINER) in the Gulf of Mexico in April for 10 months which meets your target of quick start. The goal of the project is to grow floating macroalgae at large scale for energy conversion and co-products in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean. MIT students can, if interested, tackle technical challenges along with our experts or in parallel to design the best solution.
Suggestions:
Underwater imagery in top meter of water column to view organisms that co-habitate floating mats. Important for environmental reasons (ESA) but also as sources of nutrients.
Create custom software to automate evaluation of satellite imagery to detect Sargassum mats. Top satellite oceanography experts are on the team.
GPS drifters to maintain location with floating “farmed” mats. They need to float at the same rate as Sargassum mats. 3-D print to mimic a plant? Or build propulsion to stay with the plants.
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