Ocean tech: New ventures and technologies for exploring and navigating the seas

Most of us spend most of our time on land. So we don’t really know a lot about the largest part of our planet–the oceans and seas.

Perhaps as a consequence, most of us aren’t really aware of what’s happening in “ocean tech”: the technologies that enable exploration, discovery, and navigation of this part of our world. Here, I want to highlight some recent developments in this area. I used the tech discovery software we build at Mergeflow to explore these developments.

As always, my goal is not to be exhaustive. Rather, I’d like to make you curious about the tech space I write about, and provide a jumping-off-board for further discovery.

Ocean mapping and maritime data

My starting point was?this search on ocean mapping and data?in Mergeflow. You can also click on the picture below to see the data.

Sea Machines: Automating the boring stuff

If you have ever steered a ship, you know that this can be a bad combination of, well, boring (most ships aren’t very fast, and nothing may happen for long stretches of time) and terrifying (when something happens, you really need to be alert and act in a foresighted way because you can’t just slam the brakes). This combination of boring and terrifying can induce fatigue, which of course is dangerous.

Sea Machines?makes systems for ships that are autonomous but operate under human command. The idea is to have sensors and AI mitigate the fatigue and general human error risks, by freeing human operators from routine and repetitive tasks. Sea Machines systems can be retrofitted into existing ships.

Here is a video that shows how Sea Machines can automate a survey & search operation:

In July 2020, Sea Machines raised $15M from?Accomplice,?Toyota AI Ventures,?TechNexus,?Geekdom Fund,?NextGen Venture Partners,?Eniac VC,?LaunchCapital, and?Huntington Ingalls Industries.

Saildrone: Sensor drones for real-time maritime condition awareness

Saildrone?makes autonomous sailing drones. Because the drones are powered by wind and solar power, they need no fuel. Of course, not having to re-fuel has obvious advantages if you are an autonomous ocean-going drone.

A Saildrone on the water. Image from?Saildrone’s website.

The goal of Saildrone is to help us better understand our oceans, by providing real-time monitoring of maritime conditions.

In October 2021, Saildrone raised $100M Series C from?Bond,?XN,?Standard Investments,?Emerson Collective,?Crowley Maritime Corporation,?Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund,?Lux Capital,?Social Capital, and?Tribe Capital.

Sofar Ocean: Buoy-based IoT sensors for ocean intelligence

Sofar Ocean?operates a globally distributed IoT sensor network. This network delivers ocean condition data that can be used for environmental research, routing, and other applications.

You can even buy their open-ocean sensor buoy,?Spotter, online.

Sofar Ocean’s sensor buoy, Spotter. Screenshot from?Sofar Ocean’s webpage.

In November 2021, Sofar Ocean received a $39M Sereis B investment from?Union Square Ventures,?Foundry Group, and others.

Terradepth: Using autonomous submarines to build a “Google Sea”

Using fleets of autonomous submarines,?Terradepth?works on mapping out the deep sea. Just to give you an idea of the size of their submarines, here is a photo from?Terradepth’s Instagram account:

A Terradepth autonomous submarine. Photo from?Terradepth’s Instagram account.

When I did a?more detailed search for Terradepth in Mergeflow, I found a patent that suggests how their submarines may navigate. The patent mentions?a geographic locating method that involves taking pictures of the night sky. In other words, navigation by stars. And?another patent suggests?that Terradepth’s submarines are powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The data that’s collected by the submarines are then fed into a data management platform called?Absolute Ocean. This platform can also integrate data sources and feeds from third parties, including customers’ own data sets. I assume that this versatility plays an important role in Terradepth’s?maritime survey services.

In December 2019, Terradepth raised $8M from?Seagate Technologies?and others.

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