Israel to farm ocean fish in the middle of the desert .
“Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly,” wrote Kraft, "but in Israel over the last decade a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business.
"Scientists here say they realized they were on to something when they found that brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proved an ideal match.
" ‘It was not simple to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense,’ said Samuel Appelbaum, a professor and fish biologist at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
I can’t find a better piece on it, but it’s damned clever what they’re doing, with oodles of benefits for the environment as well, it seems.
Speaking of fish in the desert. . .
Fish bones and manure may be the best solution for reversing desertification, according to scientists at the University of Stavanger in Norway.
A sponge-like biodegradable membrane discovered by a team led by Torleiv Bilstad allows plant roots to retain more water and regulates soil temperature. Made from organic waste matter such as seaweed, fish bones, and chicken manure, the membrane boosts the water-holding capacity of the soil.
“There are no negative effects,” Bilstad told City on a Hill Press (CHP). “Since it’s a biodegradable membrane we don’t do anything artificial to it.”
I’ll WAG that it’s pretty cheap to make, too.
“There are no negative effects,”
But then again, most deserts are quite remote anyway
There seems to be an underlying notion that deserts are just useless, sterile, wasted areas. This isn’t necessarily true.
