A Stream Bundled from Mist Drops—The Untold Waterway: History of Revolution Vol.25.S

MC: Ai, Yu

📚Magazine: History of Revolution

From the Mountain of Mist

When Yu pressed the play button, the dry mountainside appeared on the editorial department's monitor.

White pillars stood along the ridge. The wind, laden with mist, passed through the black mesh stretched between them. Small water droplets that appeared on the surface of the mesh eventually turned into streaks and fell downward.

Yu:
I want to write an article about this. Catching clouds to make water sounds like something out of a fairy tale, doesn't it?

Ai:
It's not a device that creates water, but it is an interesting technology.

Yu:
Is it not?

Ai:
It doesn't create new water from the air. It collects water that is already present in the mist. The name is CloudFisher. If you translate it literally, it's like a cloud fisherman.

Yu:
So you're not fishing for clouds, you're fishing with a net.

On the screen, the water droplets fell into a gutter below the mesh and disappeared into a pipe.

Yu: Hearing the mechanism, it's surprisingly simple.

Ai: Yes. But a simple principle and simple implementation are not the same thing.

Ai returned the video to the beginning. She didn't play it, but stopped the screen at the mountain peak, which was half-hidden in mist.

Ai: Even if you brought this mesh to the rooftop of a building in Tokyo, you wouldn't necessarily be able to collect water in the same way. Because there are many conditions outside of what you see in the video.

Mist Alone Is Not Enough

Ai:
The setting is Mount Boutmezguida in the Anti-Atlas mountain range in southwestern Morocco. Moist air carried from the sea hits the mountain and turns into mist. That mist is pushed by the wind, passes through the mesh, and leaves water behind.

Yu:
So, it's not just the mist that's necessary.

Ai:
Yes. It involves the wind that carries the mist, the terrain where the nets can be installed, and the elevation difference that allows the collected water to flow to its destination.

Yu:
So it can't be used just anywhere there's a lot of mist?

Ai:
You need to look at not just the frequency of mist, but also the wind direction and speed. If the wind doesn't carry the water droplets, they won't reach the nets. Conversely, if the wind is too strong, it will destroy the equipment.

A few days later, a report arrived on their desks.

Yu traced with his finger the title written on the cover: "CloudFisher Mist Harvesting and Water Supply Project in Southwestern Morocco—A Comparative Verification of Claims in the Video and Publicly Available Documents."

Yu:
...It's thicker than I thought.

Ai:
They are cross-referencing the content spoken in the video with publicly available primary sources, government agency documents, peer-reviewed papers, and independent reports. It seems like a very long pipe was needed to channel the water into a single article.

Ai opened the page describing the older type of nets used before the completed CloudFisher.

Yu:
In the video, it looked like the nets were using the wind. But they were also destroyed by that same wind, weren't they?

Ai:
Technology that uses the power of nature is not necessarily technology that goes against nature. The wind you want to use and the wind you must withstand come from the same place.

Ai traced the record photos of the old equipment with her finger.

Ai:
The fact that the equipment broke does not negate the potential of this technology. They observed the failures and updated the structure to match the local wind. There is value in that process as hardware.

Yu:
It didn't remain because it was perfect. It remained because it was rebuilt after it broke.

From net to faucet

Yu was comparing the report with the video, which remained paused.

Yu:
I understand up to the point where water can be collected on the mountain. But the water that falls from the nets isn't drinkable just like that, is it?

Ai:
Yes. From that point on, it's no longer just about net technology. You have to collect it, store it, treat it, and deliver it through pipes. Even if CloudFisher can become a water source, other technologies are needed to make it a water supply system.

Yu:
When you look only at the nets, it makes you think that everything from the clouds to the tap flows naturally.

Ai:
Gravity does do a lot of the work, actually. But gravity doesn't check water quality or fix broken pipes. Using natural forces and not needing human management are two different things.

Ai opened the verification results of the report.

Ai:
The fog water harvesting technology and the water supply project in Morocco itself did exist. The trend that women's water-fetching time decreased and girls' educational opportunities expanded is also supported by multiple documents.

Yu:
But the specific numbers that appeared in the video—75% lower cost than seawater desalination, 20% increase in women's income, 35% rise in school enrollment—could not be identified in this investigation.

Ai:
They connected cases from different regions and stages into a single success story. Not being able to confirm something doesn't immediately mean it's false. But the more accurate numbers look, the more you need to verify where they came from.

Yu:
What I wanted to write about at first was the technology I honestly thought was amazing and the drama depicted in the video. But after reading the investigation report, what I want to leave behind has changed.
It's not about lining up the correctness of the numbers, but about what happened when this technology entered people's lives during the years the video compressed into a few minutes. I want to convey that invisible time.

Ai:
The establishment of water-harvesting technology and its acceptance into daily life are at different stages, after all.

Yu:
Yes. I thought the story ended once the water arrived. But the report even wrote about what happened after that.

The water arrived. Yet, it was rejected.

Yu's hand stopped in the middle of the report.

Yu:
In a place where water is scarce, they left the water they worked so hard to collect running... Reading just this part, the residents seem selfish.

Ai:
That's true. But an efficient distribution method from an outside perspective doesn't necessarily become a way of life that the residents can accept. The problem wasn't just whether the water arrived.

Yu:
Having water in the village and having water come to your own home are not the same thing.

Ai:
Communal taps look like a rational way to consolidate equipment. But what the residents wanted was not a new system of going to the center of the village to fetch water, but a water supply that reached each household. The project side changed the distribution method itself after receiving the rejection.

Yu:
Technically, they were able to deliver the water. But that alone wasn't enough to get it accepted.

Ai:
That's why they didn't force the residents to adapt to the technology, but instead re-adjusted the distribution method to fit their lives. The term 'social implementation' sounds a bit stiff, but perhaps it's really just the accumulation of these kinds of adjustments.

Ai turned the page from the records of the communal taps to the blueprints for the individual household piping.

Ai:
It wasn't just the arid land that CloudFisher had to face. There were already existing water supply methods in the region, perceptions of costs, those responsible for maintenance, and family roles. There was also the common sense of daily life regarding how water should be delivered.

Yu:
If you're introducing a new water source, explaining the technology isn't enough. You have to understand the meaning behind why the residents rejected it, don't you?

Ai:
Yes. Instead of uniformly replacing existing water infrastructure, we need to supplement shortages in areas where conditions are suitable and divide roles with existing systems. That form needs to be created together with the residents.

What came down from the clouds

Ai played the video that had been paused.

Yu:
This has become a much more complicated story than when we first saw it.

Ai:
Yes. But I find this version more trustworthy regarding this technology.

Yu:
Even though it includes the failures?

Ai:
Isn't it easier to think about the next location with a technology where you know where it broke, why it was rejected, and what was changed, rather than one that had no failures?

Ai returned her gaze to the water droplets tracing the mesh.

Ai:
CloudFisher is hardware with great potential.
However, it is not a magical water source that can be placed anywhere. It depends on fog generation, wind, topography, and the elevation difference between the collection point and the supply area.
Only when water storage, water quality management, piping, maintenance, fees, and resident understanding are added to that can it become part of the regional water infrastructure.

Yu:
So, all the mesh catches is the fog.

Ai:
Yes. Connecting that water to daily life is a human job.

On the screen, another water droplet traced the mesh and fell into the gutter.

Yu:
Water descends the mountain by gravity. But the path into daily life is something humans have to build.

Regarding the research materials

This article is based on the independent research report "CloudFisher Fog Water Harvesting and Supply Project in Southwestern Morocco: Comparative Verification of Claims in Video and Public Documents," which is based on public materials.

The report starts from the client's video observation records, and the investigators have not directly verified the original video footage. Furthermore, a determination that something cannot be confirmed indicates that supporting materials could not be verified within the scope of the investigation, and it does not immediately conclude that it is false. The conversations and editorial scenes in this article have been reconstructed to convey the research content.

[Click here for the independent research report PDF]

Column

This article was created based on a video provided by a reader.
🎦https://youtube.com/watch?v=wSbPX8Scr2I&si=msUUSw2QLOqdtPF1

To be honest, my first impression was just, "Wow!" and "I have to write an article about this!"

However, as I looked into it, I found that, as mentioned in the article, some parts had been dramatized to look cool.
The person who provided the video also mentioned the possibility that it might have been "embellished."

Even so, the technology itself and the challenges faced by the engineers are real.

CloudFisher is not a technology that can be used anywhere.
While there may be regions in Japan with suitable climates and topography, Japan is blessed with rainfall in many areas, its forests and terrain store water, and its water infrastructure is already well-established. Therefore, at this moment, the need to introduce this technology may not be very high.

However, I had a thought while writing this.

Couldn't a simplified version of this technology be used as temporary equipment during disasters? By transporting foldable nets, gutters, and water storage tanks to disaster-stricken areas, we could collect water from mist and rain. Even if it's difficult to use as drinking water immediately, it might be able to supplement domestic water for toilets and cleaning.

In Japan during normal times, it may be a technology with low necessity. But the moment the water supply is cut off, its value could change.

Oh, and at the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo, "Raising Water," which creates drinking water using humidity in the air, was also exhibited.
It looks like a tea dispenser from the near future.

Lastly, thank you very much for sharing such valuable information.

—Yumeno Yuito