Kribble TFN (theoretical future news is a work of fiction)
***fade from black with somber music***

--Narrator commenting over scenes of desolated oceans and other ways humans have harmed the oceans--

During the early 21st century our ocean’s were at risk.

Over fishing (negative visuals of industrial fishing)

Plastic Pollution (images of ocean garbage patches.

Over heating from climate change (bleached reefs)

The world saw failure and collapse.

The scientists at Nodens Biotechnology saw our next innovation.

An innovation that would help to cool the oceans

A solution to remove plastics from our blue oceans

A creation that will feed the world.

(music shifts to hopeful music, and a visual showing a friendly version of Kribble)

We combined biotechnology and nature to bring the world, Kribble.

Kribble is our latest enhanced bio-solution**. Kribble can work day and night filtering and feeding the world’s oceans. Our children deserve a clean ocean. (images of happy kids in open water and hopeful music)

Side view of the first large scale Kribble Farm Prototype design

--Commercial ends—

Exert from the Great-Great Movement blog post from Sept 4, 2052

When I first saw an ad for Nodens Kribble initiative, my first thought was, how the *explative deleted* did this ad get into my supposedly ad free news feed. My second thought was, why are they telling me about a product I will never buy? As it turns out Nodens Biotechnology is part of the growing list of companies looking to change the world’s opinion on the best ways to undo the damage done to the world’s oceans during the Selfish Decades(*3). We here at the Great-Great Movement(*4) are always curious about new ideas to heal the world. Over the last 2 weeks I interviewed team members from Nodens, independent researchers, and policy experts hoping to give a complete picture of what Kribble is and what Kribble might mean to our future.

First a bit of background on Kribble.

Kribble is the marketing name for a collection of genetically engineered organisms developed by Nodens Biotechnology. A Kribble colony is a science fiction cross between sea-sponges, bacteria, and fungi. According to documents submitted to the African Union BioEthics Board, Kribble colonies are intended to grow at depths between 150 and 350 meters. At depths below 100 meters there is a steady increase in the nutrient density of the water. Kribble Colonies are designed to take advantage of the increased nutrient densities of deep water in ways other organisms are unable to. The bacteria that live inside the Kribble colony are modified to get the energy they need to grow from electricity. Instead of depending on almost non-existant sunlight the Kribble colony can happily grow in the dark so long as there is enough electrical energy. In the same AU BioEthics document the Nodens team argues that the fact their organisms are dependent on electricity to drive growth and reproduction the risk for uncontrolled colonies forming is minimal.

While the bacteria uses electricity to convert nutrients and dissolved carbon dioxide into something that the Kribble Sponge can actually eat, fungi are hard at work. All over the interior walls of the Kribble Sponge are small groups of fungi breaking down plastics into useful building blocks, all while helping to keep the pores of the Kribble Sponge clear of debris.

an early prototype of the Kribble farm colony base.

As Kribble colonies get larger it becomes more difficult for sufficient electrical energy to reach the outer parts of the sponge’s body. Eventually these electrically limited pieces break off. Once a part breaks off it will begin to float to the surface. These little pieces are bright white and nutrient rich. As pieces float up they transport critical nutrients that can help phytoplankton colonies grow faster….

* Nodens is the name of a Celtic god of the sea and healing

**read genetically modified organism

(*3) The Selfish Decades is a term used to describe the period from the 1980s-2030s where mostly western government national policies avoided aggressively battling the existential threats of climate change and ecosystem degradation

(*4) The Great-Great Movement represents one of the many organizations working to see a world where atmospheric and oceanic conditions return to pre-industrial levels. They get their name from the idea that the grate great grandchildren of the founding generation will see these improvements.

The idea of Kribble is part of my attempt to start work on world building for a story I’m working on, where humanity works hard to fix what was broken during these Selfish Decades. Kribble is a contraction of Krill and Kibble. Krill are one of our planets most plentiful organisms, but as climate change and human resource management take their toll on the ocean’s ability to produce Krill may need a helping hand. I am imagining that small pieces of Kribble would either directly feed Krill or feed the organisms that Krill feed on.

Roughly speaking what I am proposing for Kribble is within the realm of possibility, I think. There are bacteria species that get their energy from electricity as opposed to sunlight. Fungi capable of “eating plastics” exist, and so it wouldn’t be that difficult to imagine these plastic eating fungi benefiting from living on a filter feeder that brings the plastic to the fungus. Last but certainly not least, there are already examples of species of Sea Sponges that have symbiotic bacteria living on them.

I imagine free floating power plants bobbing up and down on the surface of the water generating electricity day in and day out. That electricity is then transmitted down to growth platforms hundreds of meters below the surface.

The growth platform I made for this post ended up looking scarier than I originally intended, but also looks cool so I’ll stick with it. The pointy “mouth” would be where nutrient rich sea water is pumped in with the arms spreading out serving as the growth surface for the Kribble Sea Sponge Colonies. Honestly I’m not sure how important having active pumping would be if you already have sea sponges which have evolved to move water on their own.

One question for me down the line is do I think the plastic filtering happens in the body of the sea-sponge parts of the kribble, or would it make more sense to have organisms in the flow pipes doing the eating of the plastic. There is also the question of pipes vs just having a growth area. Pipes convey more active human involvement, which has a certain appeal from a risk management stand point. If my gene-modified sea-sponges don’ need active pumping to help them get sufficient water flow, it makes it that much easier for the kribble colonies to get loose.

Personal Unanswered questions at time of writing,

Ignoring everything else, how hard is it to make it so when a section of the Kribble Sponge breaks off it floats to the surface?

Possible questions from you:

Ok yeah but how is Novads going to actually make money?

One possibility is open ocean fish farms. There are already proposals to make floating fish farms to allow companies to grow fish in the open ocean that they know are there fish. Current approaches generally require that these farms would need feed brought in from somewhere else. The Novads system could grow sponges until they get to an appropriate size and then turn the sponges into food pellets.

Another potential revenue stream could be sequestration. Our current financial system doesn’t really incentivize cleaning up emitted carbon or plastic waste in the open ocean, that doesn’t have to be the case, it is possible for our civilizations to pass laws that reward organizations that help scrub plastic/excess CO2 from the world.

How confident are you that something like a Kribble colony out in the real world wouldn’t mutate into something that could escape its electricity “food source”?

No effing clue. This is a level of detail that is beyond my ability to meaningfully answer.

Are there any risks to natural sealife from Kribble?

Probably tons. Off the top of my head, Kribble might produce compounds problematic for other organisms (thankfully this is fiction so I can control that variable, but if you wanted to make a real world Kribble like organism, a big challenge would be making sure that Kribble was a benign food source) A weirder risk is that of Kribble being too nutritious at the wrong time. If you have ever heard of red tide, you have heard of a situation where sea water had too many nutrients and as a result microorganisms grow too rapidly which can cause a build up of toxins or remove all of the oxygen in the water.

Why do you refer to this period as the Selfish Decades?

Honestly because as a society (US and Western nations especially) we are selfish, we have many technologies and policies that could drastically improve how sustainable this world is, but because our laws and corporate methods promote short term gain over sustainability we are wasting the opportunities of future generations. I consider this selfish.

Are you including yourself in this consideration?

Oh yeah, I try to vote for policies that will be more sustainable and I have worked on efforts to make lower carbon energy sources, but at the end of the day, I fly half way across the planet with regularity, I eat a diet higher in animal protein. We can all be better, there’s nothing wrong with demanding a better future, even if you aren’t “perfect”.

Some sources of inspiration/Technical Details

One concept that probably helped inspire some of my thoughts on Kribble is a concept of creating robotic floating kelp farms. Their premise is to have a giant web for kelp to grow on, during the daytime the system floats to the surface to capture sunlight. At night the robotic kelp web sinks to deeper waters, soaking up nutrients to provide the appropriate chemistry for daytime growth.

Personally I’m curious what could be done if instead of trying to transport the entirety of the kelp up and down, would it “make more sense” to instead have something like a chemical sponge capture useful materials and only transport those chemicals up and down. By “make more sense” I am basically asking would the sponge be able to help move more nutrients without requiring as much energy to raise and lower. Honestly the more I think the more I think there might be a point where only moving nutrients would be more mass efficient, but accounting for the research costs associated with the engineering challenge you are probably better off just moving the Kelp.

Questions and comments are welcome.

"tube sponges 3" by AlKok is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0