Ships need frequent maintenance to their hulls to prevent drag due to marine life castaways that accumulate over time. Now researchers are proposing adding a second skin to ships that is capable of sloughing off undesireable hangers-on inspired by the skin of marine mammals.

From the New Scientist article:

Ganguli's solution is inspired by the skin of the long-finned pilot whale, Globicephala melas, which was investigated by Christoph Baum at Hannover School of Veterinary Medicine, Germany. In a paper published in 2002 Baum's team reported that the surface of the whale's skin is criss-crossed with a network of nanoscale canals too small for any barnacle larvae to gain any purchase (Marine Biology, DOI: 10.1007/s00227-001-0710-8). They also found that the canals are filled with a gel of enzymes that destroy proteins on the surface of bacteria and algae.

Ganguli is now working on a way to make a ship's hull perform a similar self-cleaning trick. His idea is to cover the outer layer of a ship in a metal mesh, beneath which is a regular pattern of holes that exude a sticky, biosafe chemical that becomes more viscous on contact with seawater.

As the secretion oozes out of the pores it fills the gaps in the mesh and pools on top to form a viscous skin coating the entire hull. This skin steadily wears away, taking with it any life that has gained a foothold, and is replaced by new slime from below.

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Read the full article here.