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Growler - A Short Story

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Robert Tulip

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Growler - A Short Story

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Growler – A Short Story
Robert Tulip
© 26 November 2011

A growler. In the heaving waste of the Southern Ocean, the emerald glint of the iceberg caught the eye, finally. A small chunk, suitable for drinking water collection. The berg is mapped by satellite, guiding the boat to its coordinates. Now, the trawler lays down its net.

Not a woven mesh, but a solid sheet of malleable plastic. The boat sits next to the berg in the high seas between Australia and Antarctica. Laser measurement confirms the dimensions: 120 cubic meters above the sea, 880 cubic meters below the surface. Diameter 12.4 meters. Exactly one megalitre, minus debris. A million litres of liquid gold.

The Argice uses its fishing tackle to hunt bergs. This is a nice one. A megalitre of iceberg brings $50,000 net profit, after costs and wages of $150,000. Sold at 20c per litre, this berg would gross $200,000 for drinking water. Getting it to the tap is the next step.

The Argice lowers a 50 meter long roller of plastic into the sea. Robot craft unroll the sheet under the growler until the sheet is evenly positioned to surround the ice. Ropes at the four corners float to the surface and shoot by controlled rocket onto the top of the berg. Joined together, the ropes shoot up a sail to pull the iceberg to Australia.

The sail catches the howling fifties. Rising high above the ocean, it pulls the sheet around the berg, and starts the slow trek north. This sail is a robot. Others use humans, like paragliders, but costs for humans are higher unless the pilot rides the sea wind for fun. 2000 km at 2 km/hour takes 40 days. A long time to sit above the blank swell, but some like it. Mostly we use robot computers.

Many men have tried it. Iceberg capture started from paragliders using a ball of fresh water as ballast as they flew from New Zealand to Australia and back. Fun. Flying at sea tethered to a ball of fresh water is the new adventure sport.

Now the tuna industry is on to it. Water is scarce in the desert. One megalitre bergs are fine for drinking water, but the big money is in irrigation. Eyre Peninsula wheat farmers will pay $1m for a gigalitre of fresh water. Reliable supply gives them a good crop every year, like California. Money in the bank. A gigalitre iceberg is just over 100m in diameter, sticking ten metres above the sea. Once we worked out how to catch megalitre growlers, the step up to medium and large bergs was just scaling up, and better money.

The first sail caught the wind. It let out a next sail, and a next, until a set of seven sails rode the howling winds of the Southern Ocean pulling the cargo north. The computer brain in the first sail reefed the lines to catch the wind, managed from the boat.

The next step is getting the fresh water out of the bag on to the farm. We use the tide. A floating bag of fresh water tethered in sheltered water at the coast is used to pump a bag beneath it on the ocean floor, one cycle of rise and fall per tide. Pumping a gigalitre takes a day. The growler moors at the tide pump station after it has melted on the journey north, turning into a big sack of pure fresh water, with all the debris sunk to the bottom of the bag. Floating in the sheltered water of Spencer Gulf, the tide and wind give a zero energy pumping source for the farms. No need for polluting expensive desalination!

Icebergs are the new whales. Some men have been lost catching them, but berg catchers are tough sailors, and the pay is good. The industry is good for the environment and the economy, so the risk is okay. There are a lot of bergs in the sea, and they will just melt anyway if we don’t catch them first.
adriellemartin
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Re: Growler - A Short Story

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That's a nice one, i am impressed.
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