Fog Harvesting

Image by: Evan Leeson/ecstaticist

Small communities in Chile, Peru  and South Africa are harvesting fog for their water needs.  Fog harvesting is an ancient technique of collecting water -- dates as far back as 2,000 years ago when people collected fog water dripping from trees.  Serious harvesting started only a hundred years ago.  The idea for a mesh fog collector probably came from observing dew on a spider web.  Apparently, humidity changes the structure of the protein fibers of a spider web creating knots in them.  The water droplets slide down the smooth part of the fiber in-between the knots and collect at the knots.

Robert Schemenaeur,  Emeritus research scientist in the Department of the Environment in Canada developed the first fog catching project in Chungungo, Chile at the edge of the Atacama desert.  A fog collector consists of ultraviolet-resistant polypropylene mesh, stretched horizontally between two upright poles. The net is positioned at right angles to the prevailing winds. As fog passes through the net, it forms larger water droplets. The droplets run down the mesh and drip into gutters. The water then flows into pipes, which feed into a reservoir.
The project provides 40 liters of water per person per day.

Encouraged by the success of this project,

two German conservationists, Kai Tiedemann
and Anne Lummerich, tried the same technique in

Bellavista, Peru a settlement close to its capital city Lima.  Lima gets only a few drops of rain a year but a thick fog covers the city eight months in a year. The Germans who run an NGO called the Alimón enlisted the help of the members of the community in building these meshes, planting the trees, laying the gutters and creating a reservoir/tanks for the water.  Alimón is a Spanish term for 'working together'.  This project would not be possible without the participation of the entire community.  For more on the work of this NGO click here.


The 200 people that live on the steep slopes of Bellavista had no running water and are considerably poorer than the residents that live downhill and enjoy municipal water.  They spent one-fourth of their incomes on water which was delivered to them in trucks.  Fog harvested water has very little impurities and is much cheaper. A single net alone catches about 560 liters of water.  “At the beginning,” Lummerich said, “the people from the village thought Kai carried the water uphill during the night to fill the tanks, because they couldn’t believe there was so much water.”

Funnel shaped contraptions tied to Tara/casuarina trees also collect fog water; they drip down into gutters or tiled channels and transported storage tanks.  What is wonderful about fog harvesting is that people actually plant trees and there is no threat to the environment. 

It is also heartening to know that communities bond when there is a common cause.


The fog harvesting pictures on the blog are from this National Geographic website

Electronic Odysseus

"PHOTOS on an underwater camera that washed up on a beach in Florida have revealed it's epic ocean journey and also led investigators to its owner.

The waterproof plastic case of the Nikon camera was covered with six months' worth of crusty sea growth, but the camera itself was almost pristine when it was found in May." (Washed up camera almost pristine June 17th, 2010)

The camera had traveled more than a thousand miles from Aruba,  with a sea turtle for company for a while. Note the term "pristine".  All we need now is for Nikon to make cellphones.  Four of my cellphones have been victims of "death by drowning". They've been laundry accidents and that couldn't have been worse than an ocean voyage!

Part of the camera's voyage was captured by this sea turtle, which turned it on with its flapping fin.  Smart turtle! Wanted to bore its relatives with home videos, no doubt.  A captive audience while they are laying eggs on a beach somewhere.

Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43sg-Ytt58 to see what the camera captured.

Drills, Spills and Chills

Don't offshore oil rigs have a main shut off valve?  Yes? So why is it that 5,000 barrels, that is, 200,000 gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico every day? The Deepwater Horizon oil rig, 42 miles southeast of Louisiana's port Venice, exploded on April 20, 2010. Oil rigs do use a device called the blowout preventer (BOP), a system of hydraulic valves and pumps that caps a well before it starts gushing.  "There are electrical systems driving the hydraulic pumps, with air system backups. There are battery backups for power," David O'Donnell, an oilfield equipment consultant said. "Somehow they lost it all, or didn't have enough time to activate."   Brazil and Norway use BOPs that can be activated by a unique sound wave when the electrical signal fails. The cost of these acoustic trigger is half a million dollars and it seems that US drilling companies have enough misplaced faith in their back up systems that they do not invest in this last resort.  Well, that'll learn ya.


Who is affected by this accident? Definitely BP.  They will be spending billions of dollars, first to stem the gush, and then to clean the gush and for starting the gush in the first place.  The oil, once it reaches the land, will be impossible to get rid of and yes, Rush Limbaugh, the environmentalist "wackos" are right this time, aren't they?  The oil will kill thousands of living things. Oystermen, shrimpers, and fishermen in Louisiana are planning to sue BP, as the oil spill spells the ruin of a lucrative fishing industry in that area. The ground will absorb the toxins which will just lie there for years and years, probably get into our drinking water and definitely affect our crops. 

This is the season for marine animals to breed. Instead, they are soaking up the thick, sticky, crude oil.  The spill is spreading towards the Florida coast affecting 400 different species of animals, marshland, and of course, the ocean.  Maybe now is the time to really focus on corn ethanol as the alternative fuel.

For the 10 animals most in danger due to the oil spill, check out this link
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/the-americas/100428/oil-spills-endangered-species

IT'S ALI-I-I-VE, EEEET'S ALIVE!!

Scientists discovered a "significant" amount of water- 25 gallons of it--on the moon when the Lcross satellite crashed into a crater near its south pole making a large hole 60-100 ft wide.  The water "gives future settlers something to drink, but could also be broken apart into oxygen and hydrogen. Both are valuable as rocket fuel, and the oxygen would also give astronauts air to breathe."(NYTimes)  It's sad that the moon has to be wrung dry now.  What is the future of our moon? The stray astronaut will go there for a drink of water, the space station will exploit it, and we will have all these probes making more craters on the moon.  The sea of tranquility will become like the Chicago Wal-Mart on Black Friday of 2008.

And then, the moon will be colonised.  People will fight for rights to explore it.  They will fight for the water, and our wars will reach the boundaries of our solar system. Or a new order of pilgrims will make their way there, endure the bitter, harsh realities of the moon and on the Thanksgiving days they will "cook" water. Sigh!