Float ponds in Second life

I have created a little display of sea farming, sea steading and fish farming in Second Life. Its at the EDAKent at Scilands. Look up Wesley Farspire in game I'll show you around.

SLURL  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EDAKent/38/199/25

What's a float pond? I hear you ask.
A liferaft with plants in it. The design is my own but some work was done on this in the 1970's. Today we have the plastics and the plants so we can begin.

These SL float ponds are about 10 m across in reality they would be 20 to 50 m in diameter. The key is flexibility to roll with the waves, design for recycling and mass production. (life rafts are still often hand made)

  Most are swamp or aquatic plants. Some are salt tolerant shore plants. A covered pond with a sturdy deck could grow vegetables.

See more at:
http://vacoyecology.com/Bubble_ponds_fluke_boats.html
More pictures below.

This is an open ocean sea stead fish farm.
The floating algae farm, green, feeds small fish in one of the spherical cages. The little fish feed the big fish in the other cage. At the back is a solar powered upwelling pump bringing rich deep water up from 300 meters or more down. The surface of the ocean is relatively starved of fertility but rich in light. The upwelling pump fixes that. The result is an increase in the abundance of fish and more food for humanity.

Look, a tree?
In theory a float pond could even grow wood. Mangroves anchoured into a floating mesh with extra buoyancy and a membrane to prevent mud from falling out the bottom or washing over the edge. It could be fertilized with plant matter and algae.
It would however be of little economic value. We need to restore the mangroves to our shore lines. I'll post on that later.

Why have a sea steading display in a space related sim in SL?
Because to feed the next 30 billion we need to colonize the seas and the stars and every where else. If you can master the sea then space is easy. There's more of it and there are no storms. Key resources can be found on the sea bed, the ocean surface, as well as other planets and asteroids.
One of the criticisms of space colonisation is that 'we should fix the earth before going off world.' This is just plain wrong! Some of us believe that we can do both at once and we will never 'fix' the world to everyone's satisfaction. The real challenge is to reduce the impacts on species. Preventing extinctions. We have solutions for this to.