The actual experiment, though, is on Hawaii, where Lockheed is collaborating with a smaller firm, Makai Ocean Engineering, to build a ten megawatt (MW) pilot plant that should be operational by 2015.

ECONOMIST: Ocean heat may be used to generate electricity

In the wake of this troubling new data about ocean carbon absorption, a range of geo-engineering solutions are being hotly debated in the scientific community and piloted by eco-businesses.

CNN: Topical waters

"I started to think about what would it take to go deeper, what would it take to go to full ocean depth - that was kind of the holy grail from an engineering standpoint, " he told BBC News.

BBC: James Cameron gets ready to dive to the Mariana Trench

Goudey, the director of the MIT Sea Grant's Offshore Aquaculture Engineering Center, has devised a system by which giant spherical cages of fish would drift underwater in circular ocean currents, or gyres.

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