Underwater greenhouse thrives

As counter-intuitive ideas go, this one’s hard to beat: Instead of raising crops on land — where they’ve been growing for, you know, millions of years — how about growing them underwater, in the ocean?

 

It seems bonkers, but that’s exactly what’s happening off the coast of Italy at Nemo’s Garden, an experimental botanical facility in which fruits and vegetables are grown in balloon-like biospheres anchored to the sea floor.

 

Assembled by the Italian diving company Ocean Reef Group, the garden is made up of five structures that resemble old-fashioned diving bells. Air is trapped under a transparent dome suspended beneath the waves, with rings of shelving along the interior housing soil beds for fruits and vegetables.

The set-up has several advantages for the plants. The underwater temperature remains more or less constant, and water evaporation within the biosphere provides an atmosphere rich in humidity and carbon dioxide.

 

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