But a possible use for all that motion in the ocean that had been largely unexplored, as far as he knew, was turning its salty seawater into the fresh, drinkable variety on the spot. In the following two and a half years, Tuti? and his team designed and tested a prototype for a wave-powered desalinator, and now hold hopes of deploying the system in regions where water scarcity threatens the survival of coastal communities.

"How is it possible that even today we basically don't use this infinite reservoir?" Tuti? asks Gizmag, recalling the moment that the idea for a wave-powered desalinator first came to him. "We should just take the resource and the energy to transform it at the same place. With the colliding of different concepts I've seen previously, I realized it was possible."

Around one month later, Tuti? teamed up with eight of his fellow students at Sherbrooke University in Quebec, Canada, and got to work on making his vision a reality. Their design for the Odyssée wave-powered desalinator involves a hydraulic cylinder pump attached to buoy that floats on the surface of the water. As ocean swells move the buoy up and down, it kicks the pump into action. This builds up pressure and drives oil through a hydraulic motor, which in turns converts the linear motion into rotary motion.