Starter Kit. Idea 269 of 500. Cluster 13
Marine research stations that host foreign universities for a fee
The mechanism, from the book
An ocean eight times the size of the land, and a fishing fleet that sells its catch on the beach. The Maldives built a tourism industry on water Sri Lanka has more of.
The first step
Email the marine biology departments of five universities abroad that run field courses in the tropics, describing the coastline you can reach, the boat and the rooms you can offer, and a price per student per week. Ask which month they would come and how many students. Replies with dates and numbers, or reasons for saying no, tell you what a station must have before it is built.
- Who pays first
- A foreign university field-course leader who needs a safe, organised base on a tropical coast and has a budget per student.
- What leaves today
- Foreign researchers study tropical seas elsewhere, and the fees, the data and the scientific reputation build up in other countries.
Ask first
- Department of Wildlife Conservation. Ask what permits foreign researchers need to study marine life here.
- Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Ask whether a marine research station needs registration or approval.
Check before you spend
Whether foreign students need research permits and visas, what the boat and rooms must meet, and who supervises field work in protected waters.
Find out these three numbers
- What do universities pay for a field course abroad now?
- How many students could the rooms and boat take?
- Which universities run tropical marine field courses?
A comparison from the book
Costa Rica. Chapter Eleven
"The money was never in the samples. It was in the testing, the trials and the patents."
Sell the hosting and the science, not raw samples from the sea.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.