Five-year “Float Lab” experiment completed at Port of Oakland

Project tested prototype “island” for use as storm surge protection

Float Lab completed its five-year project at the Port of Oakland (Port). The floating laboratory gathered information about marine life and data about the use of a floating structure in an area vulnerable to sea level rise. Float Lab arrived in August 2019 and was installed in the Port’s shallow water habitat adjacent to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park. Float Lab is a prototype for an ecologically productive floating breakwater.

“The Port is proactively planning for the impacts of sea level rise,” said Port of Oakland Associate Environmental Planner/Scientist Jan Novak. “Float Lab has been an invaluable research tool to investigate materials and technologies to help protect shorelines from future storms and rising seas.”

The Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab is a small island, 10-feet by 15-feet. It consists of fiber-reinforced polymer structure that is as big as a full-sized automobile. The California College of the Arts created the Float Lab design and collaborated with the Port on finding a suitable location for the pilot project. The Port’s dive team launched the Float Lab into the Middle Harbor habitat with a portable crane and boat and helped maintain its mooring cables.

As storms increase in severity, Float Lab served as an experiment for an alternative approach to the hard-edged urban breakwater structures normally used for calming waves and rising waters. The project also functioned as an animal habitat.

The top of the Float Lab was engineered to channel rainwater and produce pools for intertidal or terrestrial habitats. Underwater, the hull’s peaks and valleys vary in size to provide habitats for different types of invertebrates. Water flowing along this underwater landscape brings plankton and other nutrients into these ‘fish apartments,’ helping to promote ecological diversity. In large masses, this biological growth can help decrease wave action and reduce coastal erosion, one of the primary impacts of climate change and sea level rise.

Scientists learned about the local environment and marine activities through conducting several experiments from the Float Lab. During its five years at the Port’s shallow water habitat, Float Lab:

• Monitored temperature and turbidity, tracking seasonal change and light transmission at this location, next to the Oakland Estuary through sensors;
• Documented the acoustic environment;
• Developed an understanding of how the pandemic’s effects on shipping traffic affected sound levels underwater;
• Visually recorded the top side of the Float Lab, and documented marine birds feeding through a time-lapse camera;
• Inspected the platform every 4-8 weeks; and
• Routinely deployed substrate tests on the underside, including the use of an underwater GoPro to photograph the marine life underneath the Lab.