Last month, Joe Quirk had the opportunity to spend a week with seasteading entrepreneur Shannon Lim and tour his innovative floating aquaculture farm in Singapore. This is step one in his long-term seasteading initiative.



Lim shows Quirk the nets for small fingerling babies.

With seed funding from Patri Friedman & João Germano’s ZIG Fund, Shannon Lim works to develop floating islands in Singapore through his company OnHand Agrarian. The platforms will be made with creatively applied, existing technology which will create floating real estate at one-fifth the cost of land in Singapore. He is testing them in the Straits of Johor, growing mangroves and reefs. An ecosystem of startups, from renewable energy, waste recycling and coffin-to-coral services (for turning ashes from human remains into coral) will be built on the man-made archipelago. Once they operate as successful businesses, Lim will send the platforms 12+ miles off the coast of Sumatra and station them directly on the equator, where waves are less rough than in the Straits of Johor.



This Mangrove already growing wild on farm is a baby wave breaker for future seasteads.

OnHand Agrarian is the incarnation of cyclical metabolism, as celebrated in the Seasteading book. The platforms are used for farming six kinds of fish. Lobsters clean the nets and filter feeders clean the water. The platforms are managed by an employee who lives aboard. Coral grows on the farm platforms, increasing wild life. Crocodiles and otters missing from the straits have returned.



Joe Quirk feeds red snapper, (also called mangrove jack or Lutjanus johnii).

How did Lim learn how to build these systems? “Wikipedia entries and desperate aquaculture professors nobody listens to. They send me their interns,” he says. It’s a school, too!

If you are interested in supporting Shannon Lim’s OnHand Agrarian, he is looking for funding.

You can reach him at +65 9862 7310 on Whatsapp or message him on Facebook.



Dedicated seasteader Shi Wen Yap and Joe Quirk published an article about the potential for seasteading in Singapore.