The plan is to cut an ocean canal into the desert to nourish commercial ponds of shrimp and fish. Instead of dumping the effluent back into the ocean, the company would channel it further inland to fertilize fields of salicornia for biofuel. The seawater's next stop would be man-made wetlands. These mangrove forests could be "sold" to polluters to meet emissions cuts mandated by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
"Nothing is wasted," Hodges said.
Global Seawater already has a small refinery to process salicornia oil into biodiesel fuel, which Hodges believes can be produced for at least one-third less than the current market price of crude oil. Leftover plant material would be converted into solid biofuel "logs" that he said burned cleaner than coal or wood.
NASA is interested in testing fuel from Hodges' halophyte. So are cement makers and other heavy industries. Retired executives from some major corporations are so encouraged by the potential that they are helping Global Seawater raise capital and focus on generating returns for investors.
Fernando Canales Clariond, former Mexican secretary of the economy and member of one of the nation's most powerful industrial families, recently joined the board. "The world doesn't move because of idealism," he said. "It moves because of economic incentives."
Fellow board member Anthony Simon, former president of marketing for Unilever Bestfoods, put it more bluntly. "Carl is a wonderful scientist," he said of Hodges. But he "is a lousy businessman."
Hodges has sold assets and maxed out credit cards over the years to keep his seawater dreams afloat. But it's not for the prospect of a big payday. A lifetime of studying the Earth's ecosystems has convinced him that the planet is in peril. He's determined to help get things back in balance.
Driving through the sun-scorched Sonora countryside, he pointed to abandoned grain silos and crumbling concrete irrigation channels, tombstones of failed efforts at conventional farming.
"It's a dust bowl," Hodges said. "We're going to making it bloom again . . . with a new kind of agriculture."
Some environmentalists are dubious. Wheat and cotton flourished here until farmers pumped aquifers nearly dry. Shrimp aquaculture operations have fouled the Sea of Cortez with waste.
Channeling millions of gallons of seawater inland could have similar unintended consequences for fragile deserts, said biologist Exequiel Ezcurra, former head of Mexico's National Ecology Institute. "We have had catastrophes in the past, so we have reason to be concerned," he said.
Hodges says his project has met all environmental requirements posed by Mexico. The biggest catastrophe, he said, would be to do nothing in the face of climate change.
"My father once told me, 'Carl, there is a special place in hell reserved for fence sitters.' "
The son of a horse trainer, Hodges grew up around racetracks. His dad once traded their Phoenix home for some thoroughbreds, moving the family briefly into a shed.
A stomach for risk-taking landed the young scientist in the top spot at the Environmental Research Lab in 1967 at the age of 30. There he decided that farming must be adapted to utilize saltwater, which accounts for 97% of the world's water supply.
His team's work on shrimp cultivation fueled the explosion in Mexico's aquaculture industry. The leader of Abu Dhabi sent his lab $3.6 million on a handshake to build a saltwater greenhouse system for growing vegetables in that arid emirate. Brando took a shine to Hodges after meeting him at an environmental gathering in the late 1970s. The reclusive star hosted the wonky scientist several times at his private island retreat of Tetiaroa in the South Pacific, an area especially vulnerable to sea-level rise.
"Marlon understood global warming," Hodges said. "He thought we were running out of time."
Hodges' model for the Mexico project is a seawater farm he designed for the government of Eritrea, an impoverished, bone-dry East African nation perched on the Red Sea. Opened in 1999, the farm consisted of ocean-fed ponds of shrimp and fish, whose waste was used to irrigate 250 acres of salicornia that the Eritreans converted into animal feed. A 150-acre mangrove wetland provided habitat for wildlife.
Political upheaval crippled the operation. But at its peak the farm generated hundreds of jobs and turned famine-prone Eritrea into a modest exporter of shrimp. Video footage of the endeavor shows a lush oasis of green in the desert.
"It was a miracle," said Tekie Teclemariam Anday, an Eritrean marine biologist who now works with Hodges in Mexico. "People viewed him like a messiah."
Whether Hodges' Big Idea wins a wider group of converts remains to be seen.
NASA's Bushnell says seawater agriculture has enormous potential. He praised Hodges' science as "superb." Still, he said algae might ultimately prove to be the best plant-based biofuel because it can produce much more fuel per acre.
Hodges is "a pioneer," Bushnell said. "But first-movers generally aren't the successful ones at the end."
Hodges contends that all manner of renewables are needed to wean the planet from its oil addiction. Still, his talk of stopping sea-level rise and reinventing agriculture is so audacious that some of his own backers have cautioned him to tone it down.
But longtime friend Sheen says Hodges isn't likely to. "We have to be outrageous in our efforts to solve" climate change, the actor said. "Carl is on a mission to save the world."
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marla.dickerson@latimes.com
