Joe Quirk

Joe Quirk is President of The Seasteading Institute and co-founder of Blue Frontiers. He is a science writer, novelist and memoir ghostwriter with national bestsellers in each category, and the co-author of Seasteading, published in 2017, which argues that floating settlements let people test new forms of government without displacing anybody. His earlier books run from the novel The Ultimate Rush to It’s Not You, It’s Biology. He joined the Institute in March 2014 as its author and, in his own word, its seavangelist.

The Institute was founded in 2008 by Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich with seed money from Peter Thiel, to enable floating societies where, in its own words, the next generation of pioneers can test new ideas for government. Its work now is legal rather than structural. It is raising money for a maritime flag, which it calls a glorious legal hack offering government protection without government control, and it has a five-year plan to create a classification society so that seasteads count as safe and are recognised by the family of nations.

Blue Frontiers was the attempt to build the first floating community. On 13 January 2017 the Institute signed a memorandum of understanding with French Polynesia to create a semi-autonomous seazone for a prototype in its waters. Political change after the territory’s presidential election ended it, and French Polynesia cut ties in March 2018.

In 2019 he directed The First Seasteaders, about the prototype seastead deployed off the coast of Thailand, and he credits that film with inspiring Mitchell Suchner to build ArkPad. The Institute’s volunteers now work with the ArkPad team on securing legal seasteads in all seas. He received the Free Cities Best Storyteller Award in November 2025, and is a Free Cities Ambassador in Panama City.