Would Floating Islands Dampen Waves on a Water World?

This is a water world with depths ranging from 2-3 kilometers deep up to vast shallows of only a few meters deep usually around volcanic islands, where there are coral islands not bigger than Hawaii's Big Island.

The planet has a 23 hour day, gravity is just slightly lower than the Earth, the large moon causes tides to be twice as strong as on Earth, it has an axial tilt of 14.6 degrees and has permanent ice at both poles, while the temperature at the equator is on average 30 degrees Celsius.

The main feature on this world are the multitude of floating islands of vegetation that are several hundred kilometers in diameter with a handful that are over a thousand kilometers in diameter.

These plant islands come in several varieties from massive Sargassum like seaweed creating soggy mats of weeds that break up and come together regularly, to colonies of plants that twine together on the surface hardening into a wood like island between 2-10 meters thick and several hundred kilometers in diameter while its roots form an entire ecosystem under the water.

The islands would be too low to affect the wind, but with tens of thousands of these islands floating around the ocean, would it help keep waves from becoming too large, and possibly help to dampen the numerous storms and hurricanes?

posted almost 7 years ago

Dan Clarke‭

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