Oceans

Algae-C is a biotechnology company that reprograms microalgae, allowing them to produce high-value plant molecules for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and beauty industries. Current manufacturing is challenged by: 1) Either quality challenges or high costs, 2) Over-reliance on overseas production, which has increased in price by up to 140 percent, and 3) Significant environmental footprints. Algae-C’s platform technology mitigates these issues by using microalgae to economically, sustainably, and locally produce molecules that are normally only found in terrestrial plants.

Ashored is a bluetech company developing sustainability-enabling technologies for commercial fixed-trap fisheries. Ashored produces rope on command (ROC) fishing systems to minimize the risk of whale entanglements and trap loss/damage. Ashored’s ROC includes a rope containment and release module (MOBI) that serves to collect and transmit data to an onboard gear tracking system (ATLAS). These tools will help increase the revenue of fishers by allowing them to fish in otherwise closed fishing zones. Building upon recent regulatory changes within Canada and the United States, Ashored’s ROC technology is at the forefront of a $1.2 billion accessible market.

Blue Lion Labs is a software company that is developing a machine-learning platform with an AI engine that can be deployed to the cloud or a hardware edge device to identify harmful algal blooms (HABs). Currently, markets such as aquaculture, public health, and water safety are monitored with lower-tech optical sensors, or sampled manually under a microscope for analysis, which are less accurate, more time consuming, and prone to more error. Blue Lion’s AI models detect specific threats and alert the operator, simplifying processes, improving response time, saving analysis costs, and reducing the possibility of harm to fish, drinking water supplies, and recreational safety.

EcoSPEARS develops products and services to eliminate toxins, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other organic pollutants, from ports and coastal environments using non-thermal and non-combusting remediation technology developed by NASA. Current sediment remediation calls for dredging and landfilling, which harms ocean and river ecosystems and moves the contamination problem elsewhere. By introducing technologies that are an alternative to dredging, landfilling, and disposal, ecoSPEARS is an environmental technology company offering a sustainable alternative to current industry standards.

Engage Creative Technologies is a software company that has developed augmented reality (AR) solutions that enhance existing marine navigational systems. By gathering all data generated from various marine navigational aids, such as radar, AIS and GPS, Engage’s proprietary data aggregator displays mission-critical data on a bridge officer’s field of vision using Microsoft HoloLens. This data is displayed in real-time, allowing for safer marine navigation when compared to traditional historical methods.  

Planetary Technologies is a cleantech company developing a highly-scalable, cost-effective negative emissions technology that permanently removes carbon from the air and stores it safely within ocean chemistry. It aims to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change through carbon removal while providing value-added carbon-negative or carbon-neutral products to industry.

Sunfish is a marine robotics hardware and software company that is developing a hovering autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for exploration and inspection. The venture’s first product, SUNFISH, creates new opportunities for subsea asset inspection and exploration in energy, defense, and scientific markets. SUNFISH’s small size and maneuverability advances the lagging maritime autonomy market via advanced software and sensing capabilities, and is offered as a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) model.

WaveAerospace is an aircraft manufacturer that has developed unmanned turbine-augmented, autonomous vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that can safely operate in extreme weather where other aircraft can not fly (e.g ocean environments, coastlines, etc). Existing small rotorcraft in the market have innate limitations to their flight control such as speed and efficiency. WaveAerospace is set apart by the physical design of its aircraft that can maintain safe and controlled flight operations during conditions that are not physically possible by their competition.

Wittaya Aqua International is a SaaS company that assists aquaculture operations, feed manufacturers, and feed ingredient suppliers use data to make better decisions. Their mission is to help increase global seafood production in a sustainable and ethical manner. Wittaya does this with the help of their two main software tools: AquaOp Farm and AquaOp Feed. Its customers include small- and medium-sized enterprises and multinational corporations in the ingredients, feed manufacturing, and farm sectors as well as some R&D facilities.