Some of my favorite pictures from Inside the £800m Dubai hotel boasting a £13,000-a-night suite and dolphins flown in from the South Pacific:
Quotes:
“Much of the focus at Atlantis, modeled on a sister resort in the Bahamas, is on ocean-themed family entertainment.”
“The resort contains a giant open-air tank with 65,000 fish, stingrays and other sea creatures and a dolphinarium with more than two dozen bottlenose dolphins flown in, amid controversy, from the Solomon Islands. But the hotel’s top floor aims squarely at the ultra-wealthy. A three-bedroom, three-bathroom suite complete with gold-leaf 18-seat dining table is on offer for £13,000 a night.”
“But don’t expect to find roulette wheels at Dubai’s Atlantis. Islamic prohibitions against gambling ensure casinos remain off-limits.”
Good – there’s an area where we have an edge! 🙂
Underwater views is another area where the seastead could shine. A fish density such as the one pictured above might not be easy to achieve though. I guess you could chum the water to attract more creatures… 🙂
Those that opt to participate in aquaculture could have a fish density very similar to those shown above. That’s my plan, at least… have some sort of circular netting and the seastead in the middle so that the underwater views are fish filled all the time. Just a thought.
Aquaculture sure makes sense here, except for the fact that single-species crowds are boring to watch 😉
A more diverse tank is possible, and may actually be preferrable, as long as there is little to no predation and disease can be minimized.
Established drill rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are actually destinations for diving trips. I went on one once.
I favor an open lattice array of seasteads connected at the corners to allow sunlight through half the occupied area to the ocean below instead of a solid expanse of seasteads connected along the edges, which would result in a dark, dismal patch of ocean.
The individual seasteads can have kelp and other seaweed gardens growing on a mesh supported at the bottom of the submerged floats, with windowed rooms in the floats to view it. In warmer climates, there can even be a coral garden instead of seaweed.Tthe mesh can be extended to form a cage to make a kitchen aquaculture garden for the seastead. It makes sense to use the floats as habitable space and hydroponic growing area (indoor kitchen garden) to provide more living area without having to add more structure above the center of mass of the seastead.
In any event, a kelp garden for the planned seastead resort off of San Francisco with underwater viewing seems like a no-brainer. Kelp forests attract a lot of marine life and are very aesthetic to look at. They make great diving. Monterey Bay Aquarium has a three story kelp tank to look at as an example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Bay_Aquarium http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_kelp/kelp_underwatercam.asp http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_kelp/kelp_cam.asp