Atlantic Canada is home to Canada’s largest ocean supercluster. Companies with experience in related products, services, and technology may benefit from exploring opportunities in this sector and region.
Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is an “industry-led transformative cluster model that is driving cross-sectoral collaboration, accelerating innovation, and growing Canada’s ocean economy in a way that has never been done before.” It is a consortium of private investors and government, with a goal to increase the value of this nation’s ocean economy by $14 billion and add 3,000 new jobs over the next 10 years. Ocean industries in Canada currently contribute about $36 billion a year to the country’s GDP, accounting for 1.5% of the country’s economy.
The Ocean Supercluster utilizes the combined strengths of ocean-related industries including marine renewable energy, fisheries, aquaculture, oil and gas, defence, shipbuilding, transportation, and ocean technology. By exploring and adopting emerging technologies, the supercluster will digitize and optimize marine operations, maximize sustainable approaches to resources, and increase safety for those operating in marine environments.
The partnership will also invest to develop and attract talent, increase supply chain opportunities, and foster more ocean start-ups to develop the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem. The technology focus is on digital sensors and monitoring, autonomous marine vehicles, energy generation, automation, marine biotechnology, and marine engineering technologies.
According to Industry Canada, program streams involved in the Ocean Supercluster include:
- Ocean Sensing and Characterization – Collaborative research and development projects to develop improved, reliable, and scalable technologies for short-term/long-range ocean ecosystem,
- Operational Intelligence – Develop monitoring observatories with real-time data integration,
- Data Analysis and Visualization – Develop and advance digital twin concepts for use across ocean industries; and develop intelligent, highly automated technology in harvesting, and
- Innovation Ecosystem – Support projects that will foster partnerships and facilitate interactions.
The Ocean Supercluster is collectively part of the federal Innovation Superclusters Initiative, a flagship co-investment with private industry in five sectors – Digital Technology, Protein Industries (PIC), Next Generation Manufacturing (NGen), Scale AI, and Ocean Science.