The second episode in our Business Membership Podcast Series features Mitchell Suchner, Founder of ArkPad.

Learn More about the Business Membership

All Tech Coming to Fruition: Innovations in Seasteading

In this episode, host Carly Jackson talks with Mitchell Suchner, founder of ArkPad, about their developments in floating architecture and sustainable aquaculture. From a typhoon-resistant floating home to innovative fish farming solutions, discover how ArkPad is revolutionizing seasteading technology.

Episode Highlights

ArkPad Updates

Hosted Launch Party celebration for the typhoon-resistant Ark Pad-C model in September 2024, now available for purchase

Development of Reef Resort project featuring two ArkPad platforms & 15 Glamp houses

Investment opportunities available (whole or fractional ownership)

Reef Resort opening planned in coming months

Hexafarm Innovation

Successful first harvest completed in September 2024

Integrated fish farming structure

Glamp houses designed to sit atop Hexafarm units

Sustainable aquaculture system featuring:

Milkfish cultivation

Rabbit fish (natural biofouling control)

Lobster farming

Seaweed (guso) and mussel production

Connect with ArkPad:

Reach out to ArkPad on their website to learn more about purchasing an ArkPad-C model and fractional ownership of a unit in their Reef Resort.

(This episode description was partially written by Claude AI.)

Our first podcast for our new Business Membership Program features Mason, Founder of Atlas Island. To learn more about the Business Membership Program, visit: https://www.seasteading.org/business-membership/

Key Points:

Atlas Island: A 3-year journey in community building and lessons learned

Challenges in uniting independent-minded anarcho-capitalists

Bridging the gap between online engagement and real-world action

The pragmatic approach to building floating communities on the ocean

Highlights:

Atlas Island's focus on broad strokes rather than minute details

The "maximal liberty, minimal effort" philosophy

Importance of patience in community development

Maintaining founding principles while adapting to reality

Step-by-step approach to societal innovation

Core belief: The right to be left alone if leaving others alone

Moving from forced debate to "voting with your boat"

Quotes:

"Building something new takes longer than you expect."

"You have the right to be left alone as long as you leave other people alone."

Takeaways:

The challenges of uniting individualists for a common cause

Balancing idealism with pragmatism in community building

The importance of flexibility and patience in long-term projects

Connect with Atlas Island:

Telegram:  http://t.me/AtlasIsland

Website: http://atlasisland.org/

(This episode description was partially written by Claude AI.)

Seasteading Socials are on Summer Break, but you can let us know what topics to present when we come back!

Elliot Roth, Founder of Spira, Inc, is developing algae to make changes to our global supply chain.

Elliot first discovered the nutritional benefits of algae when he was short on cash and looked up how NASA feeds their astronauts. With his background in bioengineering and genetics, his need for easy protein grew into a desire to revolutionize the global supply chain to be less extractive, and grow resources from biological organisms.

We talk about building toward a utopian vision of the future. For Elliot, that vision includes localizing the supply chain to reclaim the means of production.

We also talk about how the algae blooms and sargassum, which are currently huge problems in Florida, could be resources  to treat wastewater and also provide materials for food or to plastics or rubber.

Links

Super Slime Me Diet, support Elliot's experiment and track his progress here.

Eating like a Seasteader Video Series

Elliot’s DIY Guide for biohacking

Get your sample pack of algae pigments from Spira, Inc.

Ecotopia Book Club

Colin Lennox, CEO of Settling Seas, a subsidiary of EcoIslands LLC,  joins us to talk about using biological processes for breaking down waste to produce fresh drinking water and reclaim resources on the high seas.

Settling Seas’ wetlands-in-a-box, called Self-Organizing Wetland Bioreactors (SOWBs) function as the ecological hub for seasteads of any size.  They up-cycle human, food, and crop waste in saline and/or sweetwater wetland reactors, capturing precious iron, manganese, nitrogen, and methane for aquaponics, energy, and other in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). 

Unlike on land where nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are the limiting nutrients to plant growth, ocean ecosystems are limited by the lack of metals.  The SOWBs are essentially the keystone to ocean permaculture, capturing and concentrating scarce resources into a permanent living, mobile ecosystem.

Join us as we talk about how seasteads may clean the surrounding waters, taking lessons from Colin’s experience working with mushroom farm wastewater cycling and coal mining reclamation.

Audio editing by Lyka Sherylle Mae Rambac.

Links

Phillips Wastewater Treatment Process Diagram

Colin’s presentation on Wetland Cycling from February 2022

EcoIslands, LLC

draw.io - free tool for planning out your water system

Brendon Traxler, founder of Atlantis Sea Colony (ASC) gives us an update in this episode of the podcast, recorded from our March 2023 Seasteading Social.

Brendon explains their strategy for using a shipping container as the base structure for their underwater habitat design and their plan to use a rock quarry to test out the prototype.

We talk about how to keep focus on accomplishing a goal over many years, keeping hope alive.

Later in the conversation, we are joined by Pete Abrams of Plasticrete to talk about "floating over fighting” and his project using plastic to build floating structures.

Thank you to Lyka Sherylle Mae Rambac for audio editing

Links:

ASC Discord server

ASC YouTube

Biomedical engineer and U.S. Navy veteran spends 100 days underwater

On February 4, 2023, we hosted a Seasteading Social about Micronations in our Discord channel with guest speakers were Taz Riot, founder of Freeport, and Jan Spiekermann, co-founder of Ethos Island. ##

**The speakers represent their own views and not the views of The Seasteading Institute.**

Taz Riot formed Freeport in 2016 and followed international procedure to announce it to the UN. Freeport helped provide humanitarian aid to Sierra Leone during an Ebola virus outbreak, working with NGOs is a way to be recognized as a micronation by the UN. 

Jan Spiekermann holds the title of Knight of the Order of the Melting Mountain, Grand Duchy of Flandrensis. Flandrensis is an environmental nonprofit organization that uses micronationalism to raise awareness for climate change and Antarctica.

Micronations have some autonomy but not necessarily sovereignty. They build parallel structures to existing nations. Micronations can have varying recognition from the UN. Microstate or city state is the name for something like a micronation that does have recognition from the UN.

The guests and participants talk about the strategy of forming a micronation for seasteads, Rose Island, and Sealand.

Audio editing by Lyka Sherylle Mae Rambac.

Season 5 of the Seasteading Today Podcast will be a little different. Our monthly Seasteading Social events have been hosted on Zoom and posted on YouTube for a couple years. Each Social featuresh a guest speaker to talk about their work that is related to seasteading. This year, we moved those events to the TSI Discord Server and are recording them for this podcast. Unfortunately, the audio quality of these first two episodes is a little rough, but the conversations are inspiring, so I hope you’ll enjoy them anyway! Future episodes will have much cleaner audio.

In January 2023, we talked with Ben Silone, CEO and Co-founder of Arktide, about the Domestead project. Why is Puerto Rico an ideal place to start a Seastead company?  Why did they change the design from a single-family structure to a 100-meter dome?  We take questions from the audience. Ben explains how minerals available in seawater can potentially be used in 3D printing. Ben invites seasteaders to move to Puerto Rico to help with supervising and publicizing the build of their platform. Ben's goal is to allow a group of 10 people to be able to buy a platform.

See pictures of the Arktide design on the # Arktide channel of our Discord server.

Audio editing by Jie Flowers.

Join our next Seasteading Social event at seasteading.org/events. 

Mentions

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

Atlas Island, another one of our Active Projects

aquaculture

For our new season of the Seasteading Today Podcast, we are doing something a little different. We have been hosting monthly Seasteading Social events for a couple years with a guest speaker to talk about their work that is related to seasteading. This year, we moved those events to the TSI Discord Server and are recording them for this podcast. Unfortunately, the audio quality of these first two episodes is a little rough, but the conversations are inspiring, so I hope you’ll enjoy them anyway! Future episodes will have much cleaner audio.

In January of 2023, we talked with Mitchell Suchner, founder of ArkPad, about building structures in the Philippines and their business strategy. Mitchell explains that the design for their structure has completely changed, to honor his commitment to build modular structures that can be used as legos. He has also split ArkPad from ArkTide and set up shop in the Philippines because of the availability of workers and Freeports, a lot of tourism. They will start with marketing the ArkPad structures to hotels and resorts near shallow water.

ArkPad is also using blockchain technology to finance the building of ArkPad structures. Mitchell explains his passion for using blockchain to decentralize power and ownership to allow more people to invest in floating real estate.

See pictures of the ArkPad design on the #ArkPad channel of our Discord server.

Audio editing by Lyka Sherylle Mae Rambac.

Links:

Season 4 podcast episode featuring Mitchell Suchner: Comprehensive Seasteading with Arktide

Visit the ArkPad website

French humanist, Frédéric Pons, in this white paper set out to show the French, and the people of the world that Seasteading Cities are not only possible but are necessary.  He proposes that with the elite escaping to outer space, and the average person using virtuality and the metaverse for escapism, it's up to the rest of us to build a better life, and a better world.

His Indigo Civilization is bold and optimistic.  As he puts it, it's a humanistic vision for the future in which we live and develop on and under the seas; where we protect, flourish and enrich all living beings on the planet.

When we hear of such outrageously bold projects, we tend to dismiss them as too big to achieve.  But Pons also points out that John F. Kennedy succeeded in putting a man on the moon in only 7 years, which then enthused the whole world.  In light of that accomplishment, it’s easy to believe the Indigo Ocean Civilization can be a reality sooner than later.

In his white paper, Frédéric Pons is exhaustive in providing resources and proof of his concept.  But for me, it was the description below that ignited my mental musings and desire to be part of such a city.  Take a look, are you an Indigo Citizen?

INDIGO CITIZENS ARE…

• Living Life as an adventure, have a pioneering spirit

• Having a self-improvement dynamic as a personality trait

• Enjoying a balance of work and life

• Loving the idea of an environment teaming with life, the ocean verses land living

• Interested in unique career development opportunities

• Becoming a co-developer of a new virtuous model for life

Click below to download or to read the white paper online:

The Indigo Civilization Whitepaper