Introduction. Two philosophies have evolved over the years in controlling biofouling of ship's hulls. Firstly, a coating has been sought for many years, the surface of which would totally resist biofouling. Secondly, a coating has been sought that would provide easy release of foulants from its surface. While the roles of surface chemistry and mechanics guided scientific and technological developments in this field, and laboratory tests have been carried out to validate various models , identification of a coating that meets the above goals is still far from our sight. An ideal combination of these two approaches would be such that not only fouling would be deterred as much as possible, but also that the adhesion of foulants to the coating would be so weak that the weight of the foulant or the hydrodynamic forces created by the ship's motion would dislodge the biofoulants. The intent of this report is to embark upon a new approach in that the coating itself would undergo a morphological transition in water, so that an internal repulsive force is generated at the interface of the coating and the foulant, which would, thus, push the foulant out of the coating. This approach is philosophically similar to an idea described recently , where the authors induced an instability thus leading to a crater like pattern on the surface of an electro-active elastomer. Liu et al. showed that a thin film undergoing a wrinkling instability due to an applied electrical voltage is also capable of releasing biofoulants from its surface. These demonstrations of active biofouling control using a dynamic topography has many interesting possibilities. What we describe here is an attempt to achieve a similar result using an osmotically triggered hydrostatic instability.