A bio-technology company headquartered in the Caribbean have just launched a new service aimed at fractional owners of waterfront properties who are concerned with rising incidences of water-theft. Typically, a waterfront property’s boundaries will extend out into the sea, including the sea bed and volume of water above. On the black market, tropical ocean water can fetch as much as £1,600 a litre, particularly if it originates close to a tectonic subduction zone.
Reminiscent of the classic ‘sharks with lasers’ scene from Austin Powers, the new service supplies specially bred tuna fitted with focused microwave beam systems (lasers won’t work underwater). In conjunction with a sonar buoy array that marks out a territory, the tuna swarm patrol and engage any intruders, triggering the beam via dorsal mounted electro-muscle sensors.
Major-General Tag Jones, formerly part of the United States DARPA advanced weapons division explains “Non-lethal active denial systems have been a part of high end security for a while now, but this is the first time swarm dynamics and microwave pain rays have been combined with a bio-engineered delivery system.”
Avril Piscine Security began life as part of an American military program to train dolphins to carry weapons and take out enemy submarines and docking facilities. With the program being discontinued due to concerns from the American Humane Association, the chief scientist Doctor Olaf Lipor was looking for a way to continue the research and found it during a chance meeting after hours at an arms fair.
“I was with a group of high end arms dealers and government officials in a hot-tub, discussing how they keep their second homes overseas secure from water pirates when they were not resident in their properties. One chap said, ‘I know it’s science fiction, but wouldn’t it be great if you could actually fit sharks with frikkin’ lasers to keep the scum from stealing my water’. I almost choked on my campari because I had a compound full of dolphins we’d successfully mounted tasers on going stir crazy back in Barbados. Fifteen months later, after a few dead-ends (dolphins proved too easily distracted by hoops and balls) and the switch to Tuna (more aggressive and happier in larger swarms) we installed the first shoal for a Russian client with a Black Sea fronting Dacha.”
It’s a radical solution and might sound petty, but if you’ve invested your lifesavings in fractional ownership of a waterfront property, the last thing you want is someone stealing your water. A full beam enabled shoal will set you back tens of thousands of pounds but fortunately owners of fractional properties can benefit too, by sharing the costs across the shoal and purchasing their own fish.
Dr Lipor explains “if a group of owners adopt the fractional route, then we provide named certificates for each fish so you can always feel part of the shoal.” For those owners lucky enough to have more than one property, your shoal can be transported via Pet Air who offer an in-flight re-education service by broadcasting a unique sonar fingerprint of the new location into the tuna tanks.
Suspected water thief