A Maine fishermen, from a family of Maine fishermen, is among the finalists for a $100 million prize for fighting climate change from Elon Musk.
Marty Odlin, whose family has been fishing in Maine for generations, has started a small company named Running Tide (the name of his boat) to remove carbon dioxide, a main culprit in global warming, from the atmosphere. The company would build buoys in the ocean that would grow microforests of kelp that would gather carbon dioxide and eventually sink down to the ocean floor.
Now, Running Tide is a finalist for Elon Musk’s $100 million XPRIZE that he created on Earth Day of 2021 to sponsor the removal of carbon dioxide from the planet. Musk, of course, is the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and other ventures and is probably the richest person in the world.
Odlin isn’t your average fisherman. He studied robotics at Dartmouth and then earth systems at Columbia. He was running a fleet of five fishing boats in 2010 when he developed the idea of using kelp microforests to attack global warming. He started Running Tide in Portland in 2017, and now has backing from engineers, venture capitalists and boat captains.
He thinks that kelp microforests are among the most effective ways of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As the kelp microforests float on the buoys, they grow and absorb more carbon dioxide. In a few months, the growth peaks and the kelp microforest sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where the carbon dioxide can stay, harmless, for millions of years.
Odlin’s company says this method of removing carbon dioxide has many advantages. It’s immediate; the buoys and kelp forests can start working right away. It’s scalable; there are lots of oceans out there. It’s low-cost. And it’s simple. Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/22/us/seaweed-carbon-capture-xprize-finalist-climate/index.html
