A number of years ago I blathered on about an Idea-with-a-capitol-I that I had: drain the Great Salt Lake, scrape the muck out of the bottom, use blasts and bulldozers to dig it a hundred feet deeper, then run vast pipelines from the ocean to re-fill it with ocean water. Stock it with ocean life, in particular species that are being fished to extinction, set in place some *vast* recirculation and filtration systems, and shazam, now Utah becomes a paradise for both ecologists and fishermen. It was of course a ridiculous notion. but there ain’t no harm in dreaming big.

In the years since… there has been no progress on this idea. Oh well.

But something there *has* been progress on is land-locked aquaculture, raising food-fish in giant farms. Such as here:

Can farmers in Iowa help save the worlds seafood supply?

Where we read about a former hog farm that has been transformed into a fish farm. The waste water is not truly wasted… it goes to irrigate the same farmers corn fields, and the fish poop in the water becomes fertilizer. It seems to be a pretty good system, except that the fry (baby fish) are all flown in from Australia, not made on-site. As vast as the place is, it’s still pretty small compared to a conventional ecosystem.

Converting the Great Salt Lake into a living inland sea would be a chore, but the end result *should* be large enough to successfully host the complete life cycles of many species of ocean fish (and crustaceans, cetaceans, etc.). One advantage that making this a salt-water environment would have over fresh water aquaculture is that in the event of rains and floods, if the salt water critters get into surrounding rivers, they are unlikely to become an invasive species and damage the native system.

Still, good to see Flyover Country  expanding its economic base to aquaculture. With the rise of wind power, solar power, small-scale manufacturing/rapid prototyping, the need for high-density peoplefarms will hopefully decrease.