Merman Dan
06-14-2012, 06:01 PM
I am a married father of seven, maintain a hobby farm, and am part owner in a family business. I live three hours inland of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the “sea’s in my veins”, as Buffett succinctly sang.
I have always been fascinated by liquid space. These days, that passion manifests in the form of my undersea Dungeons & Dragons game (I’ve been running undersea games since 1998), my saltwater aquariums, my sea critter tattoos (pacific giant octopus to symbolize motherhood and weedy seadragon to symbolize fatherhood), and swimming as a merman in Second Life.
The closest I get to saltwater is when I top off the water softener for well water, dump salt in the pool for the saltwater chlorinator, or mix up a few hundred gallons of Instant Ocean for my tanks. I frequent sites like deepeanews and underwatertimes, stay glued to NatGeo and Discovery on TV, and enjoy vacation time at Topsail Beach for a week each summer. If I had a do-over, I would have studied marine biology, but I had an older brother enter that field and no little brother wants to do what his big brother does.
I recently received a new scuba certification card, to replace the one I lost ten years ago. Granted, I have not been diving in twenty years or so. Methinks I would like to become proficient swimming with a monofin. :)
If tomorrow I won the lottery, one item on my shopping list would be a seastead situated over a remote seamount far out at sea. Living “away from the things of man”; deriving power from the sun, wind, and waves, drinking fresh water pulled from the humid air or cleansed from RO/DI filters, and feasting on the bounty of the sea farmed in AquaPods. I would have hydroponic gardens, a flock of chickens (meat, eggs) and herd of goats (meat, milk), and harvest biofuel from algae. I would study the creation of new reef structures aided by low-voltage (electric reefs) or perhaps derive a new delicacy from dream fish (sarpa salpa that consume caulerpa taxifolia).
I have always been fascinated by liquid space. These days, that passion manifests in the form of my undersea Dungeons & Dragons game (I’ve been running undersea games since 1998), my saltwater aquariums, my sea critter tattoos (pacific giant octopus to symbolize motherhood and weedy seadragon to symbolize fatherhood), and swimming as a merman in Second Life.
The closest I get to saltwater is when I top off the water softener for well water, dump salt in the pool for the saltwater chlorinator, or mix up a few hundred gallons of Instant Ocean for my tanks. I frequent sites like deepeanews and underwatertimes, stay glued to NatGeo and Discovery on TV, and enjoy vacation time at Topsail Beach for a week each summer. If I had a do-over, I would have studied marine biology, but I had an older brother enter that field and no little brother wants to do what his big brother does.
I recently received a new scuba certification card, to replace the one I lost ten years ago. Granted, I have not been diving in twenty years or so. Methinks I would like to become proficient swimming with a monofin. :)
If tomorrow I won the lottery, one item on my shopping list would be a seastead situated over a remote seamount far out at sea. Living “away from the things of man”; deriving power from the sun, wind, and waves, drinking fresh water pulled from the humid air or cleansed from RO/DI filters, and feasting on the bounty of the sea farmed in AquaPods. I would have hydroponic gardens, a flock of chickens (meat, eggs) and herd of goats (meat, milk), and harvest biofuel from algae. I would study the creation of new reef structures aided by low-voltage (electric reefs) or perhaps derive a new delicacy from dream fish (sarpa salpa that consume caulerpa taxifolia).