rock diver’s blog

Greetings to all who care about Earth. I am new to VOX but not so new to Earth, and I am happy to share the part I love most, and that few people ever see. Terra Sub Aqua means the earth is underwater, and its important that we take good care of that space as well as where we normally inhabit.

It seems like the main problem we have now is that as we all need to make a living we can't help destroying where we live. Even the tiny little changes we make every day (and try to forget about) add up over years and generations, to amount to a lot of bad changes. From the perspective of our planet, our species is an explosion of devastation, occuring in a blink of Earth's eye, the past few generations of humans.

I invite you to check out what I am up to on my blog, I hope you will see it for what I intend: a way to help the planet and its inhabitants, as I make part of a living. It's a very small thing, but small things add up ...

In 1994 I started a business in the Keys.

It's composed of an acre of Atlantic Ocean that I lease from the USA to operate a farm, 56 feet (18 m) deep, 4 miles (6.4 km) offshore, near Tavernier, Florida.

It's on the "outside," or beyond the bank reef, that runs parallel to shore.

I'm doing something I dreamed about when I was a child, farming the ocean. My farm used to be a like a terrestrial desert area, only a couple types of fish and some sparse marine plants. Sand about as far as the eye could see, up to 200 feet (60 m) away.

Now, when I (or friends) get the chance to count, we find thousands of individual fish, about 80 species, like Angels, Triggers, Parrotfish, Wrasses, Hawkfish, Gobies, Groupers, Moray eels, Squirrelfish, Tangs, Cardinalfish, Flounder, Skates, Jack, even Barracuda starting Fall of 2007. There are hundreds of invertebrate critters like snails, oysters, scallops, anemones, sea fans, corals, Sea Squirts, Tunicates, Conch, crabs, shrimps, Starfish, Octopus, urchins. Sea Biscuits, marine worms, Sea Cucumbers, Nudibranchs, Bryozoans, and basket Stars.

The farm is called Terra Sub Aqua, and I sell pieces of rock that I plant there after the sea covers them with mulitcolored algae and sponges, the growths of which are governed by the fish and invertebrates that serve as my farming crew. Except for hitch-hikers that hang onto the rock when I harvest it, most of the critters on my farm stay there as I plant and harvest over the years, so I see the biodiversity and complexity of the farm increasing over time.

I recognize some of the longer term crew, mostly the top predators that keep an eye on things for me and the large grazers. They keep the other critters and weedy algae in line, so nothing gets too populated, which would be a bad thing. The small crabs and shrimp spread growths over the rock surfaces, I can trace their travel lines in colorful paths of pink and purple coralline algae that follow contours in the rock. The large grazers include Gray Angels the size of doormats that have stayed for several years. They must find safety from the occasional shark that must pass by (I've only seen one) among the rock stacks I've learned to create so they have cover places, otherwise they won't hang out on my farm.

Terra Sub Aqua is an example of ecolomy, the junction of ecology and economy. Normally we have to harm the ecology in some way in order to make a profit. Here we have found a way to help the ecology as we make a profit, and the ecology helps us do that. I want to share this experience to encourage others, I think it's our only hope as a species. Write me and check out my web site if you'd like.