About three decades ago, when he lived in Dogtown, Richard Kirschman tried to extract water from fog with a box and a fan. It didn’t work, but late last year he came across a method for “harvesting” fog with extremely fine mesh nets, used in places, like parts of Chile, that have lots of fog, but little rain. He thinks it could be used in the Point Reyes National Seashore to harvest water for local use in light of statewide precipitation woes. He recently asked the seashore’s superintendent, Cicely Muldoon, to consider it, offering to fund the experiment himself. “I want to try it here, because this is the second foggiest place in North America and we have a drought. So why not try?” he told the Light this week as he Googled pictures of the mesh nets: most look vaguely like volleyball nets, while a few resemble sleek, tower-like sculptures. The nets have a special chemical coating so that fog forms droplets on the mesh; the water drips to a trough for collection. In 2013, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that just one square foot of fine mesh could collect up to 12 liters of water a day in foggy conditions. The nets need no power source, and their maintenance consists of wiping bugs or dirt away. Ranchers, Mr. Kirschman suggested, could use them to supplement stock ponds for their cows during periods of extended drought, or the park could use them to source drinking water for the beleaguered tule elk. During the worst of the current drought, ranchers suffered from poor grass growth, a big problem for organic dairies and ranchers that need their cows to graze on pasture to meet federal requirements; in the spring of 2014, they and other organic operations secured an exemption to the rule because it was virtually impossible to meet. And between 2012 and 2014, half of the tule elk enclosed at Pierce Point died when ponds dried up. Ms. Muldoon told Mr. Kirschman in an email that she had forwarded the idea to some colleagues. The seashore’s spokesman, John Dell’Osso, told the Light in an email, “Richard’s idea sounds very intriguing. We will probably talk about this among staff and get in touch with him to see if this is possible… We would also want to look at any unintended consequences, like how tall the nets are and [if they] would they interfere with migrating birds.”