Drag is always a coeffient of velocity, if you use the torque with gearing, the drag can reduced in a square function with lower speed. Any here ever try to hold a cherry ball underwater. There is alot of force to be used. My vote, its stands a chance.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying it has no chance of moving. I'm just saying a large portion of energy produced from the bouency will be eaten by moving the empty buckets to the ocean floor. Thats a lot of resistance and not efficient!

What about a drop in to place turbine??? 

If designed to be aerodynamicly inclined to center over a pressure flow and reach its "thrust adjusted neutral bouency", you could drop them in to place over a vent and as the vent grew in to a tube, the turbine could follow it. The more load you put on the turbine, the more energy converted in to vertical thrust. So you would have to find a ballance with a dynamic water ballast. If designed to be ultra light and corosion resistant I would imagine adding an electrolysis unit with pressure vessel for hydrogen harvest would be feasible. The problem still remains though, unless its overunity, its more efficient to just keep the electricity and transmit it via AC. Wow... AC powerlines running over the ocean sounds like such a bad idea in retrospect.

Just another good idea for the pile,
~Dingus Mungus

Some good reading on vent locations and common characteristics. Click around a little.
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02fire/background/vent_chem/media/chemistry.html

~Dingus Mungus

Actually they just dropped power cable on the ocean floor for reseach modules. power in the ocean can be done, just don't plug it in without an airlock:). And as far as resistance on the down stroke, make the buckets colapsable like those finger game people made in grade school.  On the down stroke the box folds flat, on the up stroke a mechanical linkage can open it slightly to receive a small bubble and as the box most up the bubble expands fully opening the box. No lift would be relized until about 1/4 travel up, but from there on the lift would constantly increase.

Sounds much more feasible... Altho the problem remains that the more moving
parts the more maintnence required over the device lifetime, but I imagine that
if you worked out a way for the collapsing bucket to perform for years it could
generate some decent power, but keep in mind you'd still need to convert that electricty in to hydrogen and working out efficiencies for that is more difficult
than it sounds. I'm confused though... What are you going to do with all that
hydrogen 50 miles off any given coast? And what happens when your cathode
oxidizes over night? I can 75% assume that it would be more efficent to just keep
the energy you can convert from its heat and pressure.

OH! New idea for the pile... Heat differential engine! The vents average 650
degrees fahrenhiet at the mouth and while thats not very hot from an external
combustion stand point it is free and there is a lot of it! (high CFM)

Theres no doubt a massive ammount of energy is leaking out of every vent.
We need to find a way to soak up as much of it as possible to improve $/kWh.
Considering they're 50 miles out the transmission costs will already be higher,
and unfortunately while its a green concept unless it can surpass convential
power generation costs there is little chance of it catching on like wind or solar.

I think thats the best part of this concept... No one could surpress it! It's
alternative free energy, it's not the kind of free energy they could target.

Great thread so far guys,
~Dingus Mungus