NEMO’S GARDEN: COULD DIVERS BECOME THE FUTURE’S FARMERS?

FEATURE ALLY LANDES PHOTOGRAPHY OCEANREEFGROUP & NEMO’S GARDEN BY OCEAN REEF

Imagine cultivating food crops underwater.Well, the concept was born in 2012 off the coast of Noli, Italy behind the mastermind Sergio Gamberini, founder of the OceanReefGroup. A passionate diver with another strong passion in gardening married both topics in conversations with friends.There are regions in the world not ideal for agriculture, but what about coastal areas, or countries with other bodies of fresh water? So, he asked the question, “Why not try to grow basil underwater?” And thus, the experiment began.

As an innovative entrepreneur, Gamberini invested his own funds into the start-up after some initial research, and with the help of his team at Ocean Reef, six 20-foot transparent biospheres were sunk to the bottom of the sea, filled with approximately 2,000 litres of air, and are fixed at different depths, between 5 and 10 metres. The diving farmers have a step grid in which they are able to stand up and have half their bodies inside the pods while they tend to the crops, while the other half of their bodies are out.

The goal behind the project is to be selfsustainable, with an eco-friendly alternative form of agriculture, and to be economically viable. With the use of renewable energy from the sun and fresh water obtained by desalinating seawater, the microclimatic and thermal conditions inside the biospheres are the optimal environments for crop growth. No soil is used, it is instead a hydroponic culture in which the plants are grown in a controlled environment using nutrient-rich solution to deliver water and minerals to their roots.

With the difference in temperatures of the air inside the pod, and that of the water around it, water at the bottom of the biosphere evaporates to easily condensate to the internal surface area sustaining the growing crops. Each biosphere is equipped with sensors for CO2, O2, humidity, air temperature and sunlight. The external water temperature is regularly checked at both the shallower and deeper biospheres through a control tower equipped with 5 monitors and a laptop that enables the team to also communicate with each other through an intercom. It is the near-constant sea temperature between day and night that creates the ideal growing conditions for the crops. With the setup devised, there is no need for LED lighting, power, or temperature regulating tools that are used in regular greenhouse systems on land.

Basil was the first crop grown, and by 2015 they had produced green basil and red basil, a variety of 4 different salads, tomatoes, courgettes, green beans, peas, 5 other herbs, flowers, aloe vera, and mushrooms to name just a few in the ongoing experimental process. Through trial and error, the biospheres were upgraded, and their number increased, thus resulting in today’s successful underwater habitats. There are now over 100 different fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers being grown in this underwater odyssey.

The project has been picked up by other companies in the interest of science to see what plants grown underwater could unveil for the future. Plants have been grown in experiments for cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, turning them into underwater labs, as well as looking into other possible uses for the biospheres toward eco-tourism, fish farming, seaweed farming, and more.

This underwater greenhouse project could solve the issue of pesticides. The closed ecosystem within the biospheres is protected from parasites, eliminating the use of these chemicals to run a strict ecological environment with the seawater, causing no disruption to the ecosystem. A natural product is used to supply the plants with the nutrients that are essential to their growth, but further research is being done on the possibilities of producing natural fertilisers from algae found directly in the sea where future farms will be installed.

In 2021, Nemo’s Garden partnered with Siemens, one of the world’s leading technology companies, who are providing support, studying, modelling, and improving the technology of Nemo’s Garden and finalising its industrialisation as a sustainable food alternative for the world.

Progress on this collaboration will be shared on NG’s website. If you would like to learn more about the project, further info can be found on www.nemosgarden.com