Cape Fear Ocean Labs – Enabling The Toolmakers
“You could start now, and spend another forty years learning about the sea without running out of new things to know.”
– Peter Benchley
Our world ocean is the source of all biological Life on Earth. It accounts for 70% of the Earth’s surface. Yet today, according to NOAA, only 5% of the ocean subsurface has been explored and mapped. It is truly an unexplored frontier.
The Blue Economy has a long history. The historical record shows that humankind applied seafaring skills and knowledge beginning 50,000 years ago. At that time, there were less than 100,000 humans on the entire planet. That’s about 2% of the modern population of New York City. Today 40% of the global population lives within 60 miles of a coastline and coastal metropolitan regions account for 80% of global GDP.
Ocean explorers were the original entrepreneurs and their sponsors were the original venture capitalists. Ocean exploration derived science, engineering, and technologies define our daily lives. Your iPhone works today, partly as a result of the sinking of the Titanic, which spurred initial efforts on global radio frequency spectrum management. The principles of celestial navigation for space travel are based on the same principles that prehistoric humans used to navigate at sea by night. The blood of the 244 million year old species of horseshoe crabs is the key ingredient in COVID-19 testing formulas.
The golden Ages of Navigation and Discovery from 1400-1800 were the primary economic activity of European nations for 400 years. That age of Blue Economy created the first large-scale, long term, systematic exploration of physical science and the commercialization of new technologies in human history. Every sailing of ocean explorers is dependent on the toolmakers; the engineers, technologists, scientists, and craftsmen, and a place to gather, manufacture and assemble what is necessary for that ocean exploration and discovery.
Cape Fear Ocean Labs is energizing the NextGen of toolmakers for the new high tech age of the Blue Economy and its ocean explorers.
