Startup Blue Frontiers is building Seastead in French Polynesia

Blue Frontiers is the first seasteading company. Floating Islands can mitigate sea level rise. Rising seas are hurting island and coastal nations. Environmentally conscious technologies will create opportunities.

French Polynesia is ready to innovate and become resilient to the threat.

In January 2017, The Seasteading Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French Polynesia, creating a pathway for the first pilot project of floating islands governed under a “special governing framework”. The Seasteading Institute entered into a collaboration with Blue Frontiers to develop floating islands and administer the seazone. We will begin building floating islands when the seazone legislation is implemented in French Polynesia in 2018.

They are building a community of people interested in participating in the creation of the floating islands and seazone. They co-hosted the First Tahitian Seasteading Gathering in May 2017. We are offering curated trips to Tahiti in the fall of 2017 to introduce people to the local community and Blue Frontier’s vision for the seazone.

Blue Frontiers is engaged in business development activities to make our endeavor a financial success and create long-term viability for the project. We are welcoming of potential partnerships and collaborations, and invite all serious inquiries.

The agreement requires us to conduct an economic impact analysis, develop an environmental assessment framework, and undertake legal research to aid in the creation of a seazone – inspired by the legal structures of special economic zones and international best practices. Additionally, we are fulfilling our obligations, developing the islands, and will administer the SeaZone, with no public funding.

French Polynesia is creating what is effectively a special economic zone for the Seasteading Institute to experiment in and has offered 100 acres of beachfront where the group can operate.

In 2011, Mr. Quirk, an author, was at Burning Man when he first heard about seasteading. Mr. Quirk and his collaborators created a new company, Blue Frontiers, which will build and operate the floating islands in French Polynesia. The goal is to build about a dozen structures by 2020, including homes, hotels, offices and restaurants, at a cost of about $60 million. To fund the construction, the team is working on an initial coin offering. If all goes as planned, the structures will feature living roofs, use local wood, bamboo and coconut fiber, and recycled metal and plastic.

“I want to see floating cities by 2050, thousands of them hopefully, each of them offering different ways of governance,” Mr. Quirk said. “The more people moving among them, the more choices we’ll have and the more likely it is we can have peace prosperity and innovation.”

“I want to see floating cities by 2050, thousands of them hopefully, each of them offering different ways of governance,” Mr. Quirk said. “The more people moving among them, the more choices we’ll have and the

9 thoughts on “Startup Blue Frontiers is building Seastead in French Polynesia”

  1. Floating Islands can mitigate sea level rise. Rising seas are hurting island and coastal nations.

    Which is why adding ice cubes to a drink lowers the liquid level in the glass.

    Oh, wait…

  2. Galt’s Gulch on the Sea!

    Can’t wait so I can move there and take my money to these floating ‘Somalias’ (that IS the term Libtard statists always use when referring to a world w/o government…because they never could distinguish between government vs governance as distinct terms).

    That’s right…take my money and let them run America into another Venezuela.

  3. Unfortunately, I think there are going to be growing pains, but this is going to be a way of life for millions in the future. The main issues I see are: storm safety, drowning whales and sanitation. Storm safety is an obvious concern. There are obvious approaches: walls, stilts & platform, watertight, and underwater. The watertight approach could mean individual buildings being watertight, or larger enclosed spaces. Stilts don’t have to go into the ground as pylons, they can be connected to each other and float either by being hollow or having buoyant devises attached. There are pluses and minuses all around. Stilts like oil platforms have, I think is the safest approach, though not the most attractive. And it is less likely to be a issue for whales trying to surface for air. It is also proven technology with known risks.

    Looks like their approach is the low hanging fruit. Looks like they are building where there are already sandbars protecting and right next to the land. I was thinking more open ocean. They could still have issues with sanitation. Dumping human waste and laundry/dishwasher waste into the water can detract from the advantages of being on the water. You want people to be able to dive and swim, and you want to avoid creating an algae bloom, or making smells, or seeing turds float past. I suspect they will have to collect the waste and have a vessel periodically remove that. Probably sail out a hundred miles and dump it. And hurricanes could still make a mess of their little seastead. The project looks very small. It seems more like a hotel to me…not really somewhere to live.

    • Whales deal with sea ice all the time, I don’t think they’ll have a problem with seasteads.

      Your easiest solution to the black water that you don’t want to have in your location is a pipe. Doesn’t have to be a long pipe either → if your sewer empties 1 or more km down in the depths of the ocean then you’ll never see that stuff again, and the carbon in it is automatically sequestered.

      Bad weather is something that I haven’t got an answer for. I can’t even understand how people survive in Canada.

      • I can’t even understand how people survive in Canada.

        90% of the entire Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the US border, that’s how.

        And you’d think they would be big on Global Warming given how it would open up vast stretches of Canadian tiaga and even tundra for living and agriculture.

      • ” I can’t even understand how people survive in Canada.”
        Personally I keep sane in a Canadian winter by XC skiing.
        51 N 114 W

    • Re: storm safety
      There is a band a few degrees to either side of the equator where you don’t get hurricanes because there isn’t enough coriolis effect to make them swirl. Put your seasteads there.

      Apparently Peter Thiel is funding R&D on this: http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml
      If it works the best places for using it would be on the equator especially in the western Pacific.
      See the monthly ocean temperature maps here:
      http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/Global/Ocean_Temp/
      to see where the sea is consistently warm enough to use the vortex engine to power your seastead.

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