Things That Make You Go Green

We all rely on wood products, whether it’s for our fireplaces, the homes we live in, the paper we write on, or even the tissue we use to blow our noses. Many parts of the world today are experiencing deforestation due to the growing demand for wood products, which is changing the biodiversity found in our forests as well as having huge geographical and economic impacts. From 1960 to 1990, approximately one fifth of the world’s tropical rainforest was destroyed. Today, around 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost annually.

A few years ago, Christopher Godsall founded the Triton Logging Company and invented the Sawfish Underwater Harvester. The Triton Sawfish is the first commercially viable harvester of underwater forests. The Sawfish is essentially an underwater submarine, which can be used via manned operation or remote controlled. It uses a grapple to latch onto trees and a 55-inch chainsaw to power through an underwater log in seconds. One of the main issues Godsall had to solve is the fact that underwater lumber is waterlogged and heavy, which means it sinks once it’s cut. Godsall discovered air bags to solve the problem, which essentially means a reusable 500-pound air bag is tied to a tree before it is cut, letting it float for harvesting above water.

It’s estimated approximately 100 billion board feet of timber is underwater globally, which is around 30 percent of available timber in known forests. In addition, timber that is underwater is better preserved, shielded from fires, pests, and atmospheric decay. Although Godsall spends $28 to cut a tree, which is approximately the same as land prices, underwater timber commands a green premium in the market, selling for up to three times the commodity price. With a single Sawfish, Godsall is able to cut 100 trees per day.

Although there are undoubtedly marine impacts, I applaud Christopher Godsall for applying his technology to save some of our land forests from further deforestation. Many have cited that the effects of marine disturbances are much less than what we see today with deforestation. It will be exciting to follow Triton, which recently finished a successful 6 month trial where $1.2 million in lumber was harvested. This is thinking out of the box!