Credibility

It was one of those twilit evenings when the world is so many pastel shades of fairy-tale-rainbow-land that it's hard to take seriously. This watercolor sketch shows the view from my kitchen window toward Casco Bay and Mackworth Island. (I toned down the colors substantially so as not to lose credibility.)

Highwire act

Ocean power: a force to be reckoned with

Wind, waves, and other natural forces may be the lifeblood of sustainable energy, but Hurricane Sandy took things a bit too far this week. When the governor of Rhode Island declared a state of emergency on October 28, the New England Marine Renewable Energy Center was forced to cancel its fourth annual conference, originally slated to take place in Warwick on October 30-31.

With its host facility shut down, the conference committee made a brave effort to salvage the event for those who had traveled long distances to attend. Visiting energy experts were given ad hoc tours of the marine research facilities at Woods Hole and the University of New Hampshire, and a handful of presenters spoke to a small crowd at UMass Dartmouth on Wednesday.

Presenter Serhii Honcharenko of Kiev, Ukraine, explained how dolphins swim with a "flutter" motion that allows them to move seven times faster than their muscle mass would appear to permit. Goncharenko designs energy-harvesting devices that exploit the flutter principle to capture extra energy from flowing water or air. 

Pedro Fernández of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid described a wave power project he's working on in northwestern Spain, the most high-energy section of coastline on the Iberian Peninsula.

George McBride (a.k.a. my dad) of Machiasport, Maine, spoke about the tide power machine he has been inventing in the family basement for the past four years. A spiral snail-shell apparatus funnels water into a rotor and back out again, at a predicted level of efficiency that will put existing technology to shame if all goes as planned. Another promising feature (not that I'm biased): if fish or other wildlife find their way into the device, they should be able to pass right through unscathed.

Two more last-minute speakers rounded out the downsized proceedings. A Mainer representing a subsea engineering firm gave an overview of his company's work, and an intrepid UMass student stepped up to talk about tide power research in the nearby Muskeget Channel.