Jennifer LaPlante
Chief Growth & Investment Officer,
Canada’s Ocean Supercluster
Eric Enno Tamm
CEO & Co-Founder,
ThisFish
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are driving competition among Canadian businesses, but how businesses adopt emerging technology, like generative AI, is critical.
AI has the potential to significantly impact Canada’s ocean industries. The ever-advancing technology could improve efficiency and enhance sustainable practices at all levels.
With coasts to the north, east, and west, the country’s already immense ocean economy continues to experience rapid growth. “Ocean-based businesses come in all shapes and sizes, encompassing everything from marine transportation to offshore renewable energy,” says Jennifer LaPlante, Chief Growth and Investment Officer at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster (OSC). “Being a hub for ocean and AI research alike gives Canada a competitive edge.”
Working with the ocean can be unpredictable – it’s difficult to anticipate weather and climate shifts, environmental hazards, and changes in animal patterns. Finite resources must be properly managed, and geopolitical shifts can suddenly impact work in unforeseen ways. AI could help ocean industry organizations deal with these unique challenges.
Enhancing sustainable efforts
A particularly pressing issue is climate change. “People in ocean and seafood industries see huge impacts of climate change in these ecosystems,” Eric Enno Tamm explains. “It’s causing widespread problems in fish patterns, lower productivity in certain seafoods, and die offs of food chains.”
Eric is the CEO and Co-Founder of ThisFish, a Vancouver-based tech company and member of the OSC. “AI’s ability to make predictions based on data could dramatically improve marine conservation, pollution detection, and climate change prediction.”
AI also has the ability to optimize all levels of ocean industry work by streamlining automation and productivity. It will boost ocean technology in areas including fleet navigation, supply chain optimization, resource monitoring, underwater exploration, marine safety, and ocean energy production. With this, it could also help companies develop more sustainable, eco-friendly practices.
Despite all the benefits, the ocean sector has been slow to adopt AI. As Eric muses, “The work is already unpredictable, so sometimes these industries are hesitant to take additional risks.”
The future is now
That’s why the OSC is dedicated to helping the ocean industry connect with and implement AI. As an industry-led national ocean cluster, the nonprofit works to drive ocean innovation and sustainable growth of the ocean economy.
After conducting research across the ocean sector to better understand the barriers to adopting AI, the OSC launched an insights report today in advance of its release of “The Future of Ocean AI: A Strategic Approach for Canada.” With input from industry, academia, and government, the approach provides recommendations to overcome identified barriers, including addressing knowledge and skills gaps, and increasing private and public funding.
The approach supports Ambition 2035 – the collective vision of the country’s ocean network to grow the ocean economy to $220 billion by 2035. “These initiatives help to establish Canada as a global leader in ocean AI,” Jennifer adds. “We aim to empower ocean businesses at every stage to understand and leverage AI to their advantage.”
To learn more about the OSC’s insights report “The Future of Ocean AI: A Strategic Approach for Canada,” visit oceansupercluster.ca.
