Courtesy of Gensler, San Pedro, California.
AltaSea is growing as its business and innovation center on the shores of the San Pedro Channel (Catalina Channel) expands.
AltaSea is renovating warehouses and other facilities along 35 acres (141,640 square meters) of previously unused docks at the Port of Los Angeles. Its ambitious goal: to position Los Angeles as a leader in the emerging blue economy.
Michael Kelly, AltaSea Board Trustee, says, “We need an ocean that can sustain future generations. With your support, we can make it happen. Join our campaign for a better Los Angeles and a better world.“
AltaSea’s goal is based on the very realistic possibility that the planet’s oceans have the answers to some of mankind’s most perplexing challenges. Kelly explains, “Aquaculture, algae fuels, and robotic exploration of the unmapped depths are the focus of an emerging blue economy that has the potential to provide sustainable solutions to long-range environmental concerns, along with tens of thousands of middle-class jobs.”
The potential for developing the blue economy is based on Southern California’s history at developing the blue sky economy. “Starting in the 1930s, companies such as Douglas Aircraft, Lockheed, and North American Aviation established operations in and around Los Angeles because of the region’s large labor pool and mild weather, which is ideal for flight-testing aircraft,” described Kelly. “At the height of the Cold War, 15 of the 25 largest aerospace companies in the United States were located in Southern California. By 1990, 1 in 10 U.S. aerospace jobs were located in L.A., providing a key source of upward mobility.”
Currently there are hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars and more than 70 aerospace firms are located in Los Angeles County including SpaceX at the Port of Los Angeles that located across a harbor channel from AltaSea.
Concurrently as mankind looks upwards to space, other entrepreneurs are looking towards and investing in ocean exploration. Kelly points out, “Aerospace entities are among the anchor tenants at AltaSea, repurposing space vehicles as advanced underwater robotic probes. This work is already spawning industries of the future, such as ocean robotics, mobile sensing, and offshore renewable energy.”
It is estimated that the oceanic Blue Economy could create 100 million new jobs worldwide by 2025 based on hundreds of innovations.
For more information about AltaSea, visit here.
Copyright © 2008-2018 by World Open Water Swimming Association