And now for something entirely different. We saw a short while ago a photograph of a Chinese ship with somewhat miserable looking under water paint. That brought back to me something I read in the local paper a month or so ago. A small merchant vessel owned in the Netherlands is provided with a device invented by someone from this neighborhood that produces ultrasound. When the ship lays in a port the device is hung over the side, being moved all around the vessel, and its ultrasound destroys the cells of plants and animal that try to grow on the hull.
Current under water paint is loaded with poison to achieve the same effect, but that compromises the strength of the paint and it poisons the ports and their environs.More than a century ago oysters were only fit to be eaten by poor people. When the population grew and the oysters were poisoned the became too scare for poor people so they became a delicacy for the better off. So let's get rid of that poison.
A machine with near neutral buoyancy and connected to a electric power outlet, on board the ship or on an auxiliary, will push itself against the hull of a ship using a water stream square to the hull surface, the inverse of a hovercraft but in water, roll over the hull using water streams along the hull and produce the ultrasound in the mean time.
This means cheaper and stronger paint and more oysters and other sea animals for people to eat.