[extropy-chat] coral reefer madness

[spike]

I saw something on the history channel that gave me
an idea.  It was a Spanish warship that had sunk a
few hundred years ago in shallow water.  Coral had
grown all over it and had created an artificial
reef.  Small fish have an advantage in coral reefs
because the predatory bigger fish cannot effectively
hunt in those tight spaces.

My notion then is that if we created monsterously
large artificial reefs, then the smaller fish could
use them as fishy convention centers, breeding grounds,
that sort of thing.  Then larger fish could hang out
on the periphery, devouring the stray smaller fish,
and still bigger fish could devour those, and so on.
So my reasoning is that if there were massive artificial
reefs, then the total mass of fish could be raised.  

Since fish are about 10 percent carbon and about a 
third oxygen by weight (the rest mostly hydrogen) then 
increasing the total mass of fish would help reduce 
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which should warm the
global cockles of the hearts of the environmental 
crowd.  Fisher-humans should like the idea too.

The second part of the idea is how to make the reefs:
harvest some really big trees, take them out a short
ways from the shore, put weights around the bases of the
trunks, toss them overboard.  They come to a rest
with the buoyant branches upward, which eventually get
encrusted with coral, forming a nice artificial reef.

Whaddya think?

spike