"GreenWave" wins the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

The Buckminster Fuller Institute announced GreenWave as the winner of the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Attracting over 400 entries this year, the competition pool was steeply narrowed down to only six finalists. As the winning initiative, GreenWave will receive the $100,000 grand prize toward the implementation of their proposal.

The non-profit group continues to garner attention for designing the world's first multi-species 3D ocean farms, as a means to sustainably restore ocean ecosystems while also creating jobs for coastal communities.

Farming the Sea: why eating kelp is good for you and good for the environment from Patrick Mustain on Vimeo.

The GreenWave team will accept the Fuller Challenge OmniOculi award sculpture and the $100,000 cash prize during the Conferring Ceremony at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn on November 19.

Read on for more about the project.

Project summary: "The ocean that we swim in today has changed more in our lifetime than in any other similar period in the past 300 million years. Meanwhile, over three billion people rely on our ocean’s marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods. As humans, we have a stunning capacity to destroy the environment and the resources we depend on to survive. Fortunately, millions of years ago, Mother Nature, invented two technologies designed to mitigate our harm: seaweeds and shellfish."

"GreenWave's multi-species 3D ocean farms aim to restore ocean ecosystems and create jobs in coastal communities by transforming fishers into restorative ocean farmers.  This new approach moves us from growing vulnerable monocultures to creating vibrant ecosystems, which work to rebuild biodiversity and produce higher yields."

"The infrastructure is simple: seaweed, scallops and mussels grow on floating ropes, stacked above oyster and clam cages below. From these crops ocean farmers can produce food, fertilizers, animal feeds, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biofuels and much more. The farms are designed to restore, rather than deplete our ecosystems."

"A single acre filters millions of gallons of ocean water every day, creates homes for hundreds of wild marine and bird species and absorbs the overabundance of nitrogen and carbon (with kelp sequestering 5x more carbon than land based-plants) that are killing billions of organisms. The design requires zero-inputs—there is no need for fresh water."

'As a lifelong commercial fisherman, I could never have imagined being graced with the honor of being the 2015 Fuller Challenge recipient,' stated GreenWave Executive Director Bren Smith. 'GreenWave is proud to take Fuller's vision of ecological design into our oceans. We hope that our model of 3D ocean farming will be a catalyst for the restoration of ocean ecosystems, mitigating of climate change and helping feed the planet. The Fuller Challenge prize enables us to continue working to lay the foundation of a new blue-green economy.'

Check out previous Fuller Challenge results on Bustler here.