“SeaSurveyor”: An Innovative Floating Solution for Establishing Marine Protection Areas in Shallow International Waters

The recently signed UN High Seas Treaty aims to designate up to 30% of international waters as Marine Protection Areas (MPAs). Hotspots of marine biodiversity are sea mountains that form shallow waters in the middle of the sea. Since the successful protection of MPAs depends mainly on a physical presence on-site, we propose to position over the sea mountains floating bases that survey the MPAs and are therefore called “SeaSurveyors”. Low costs of the SeaSurveyors are crucial: the cheaper they are, the more MPAs can be created. Therefore, a new space frame system for the swimming platform has been developed, which is covered by a perforated aluminum mesh skin mainly for data protection reasons. The equipment with autonomous air vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles with a range of up to 2000 km allows a corresponding distance between SeaSurveyors positioned on different sea mountains. Initial estimations validate the hypothesis that the integration of pioneering engineering techniques and an emphasis on marine mountain biodiversity could enable a team of 15 SeaSurveyors to safeguard 25% of global oceans as Marine Protected Areas at a very modest expense.