79th Edition
Hi everyone!
I’m writing to you from South Florida right now as a newly certified open water diver🐟. The author of Seaking Blue is now seaking a diving buddy🤿.
While the news section is much less populated than usual this week, the opportunities and learning sections continue to grow. In the learning section, I particularly recommend looking into the article “The ‘Blue Economy’ Myth: We Have to Stop Thinking the Ocean Can Be Run Like a Business”; let me know in the comments or reply to this email what you think.
Happy Reading!
News
The World Resources Institute put out an an article entitled “How Marine Carbon Removal Is Governed in the High Seas”, emphasizing the necessity for clear and comprehensive governance frameworks to oversee mCDR activities, especially in international waters, to ensure environmental safety, scientific integrity, and compliance with international laws.
Vema Hydrogen, a startup focused on producing geologic hydrogen for sustainable shipping fuels by injecting catalyst-infused brine into shallow wells, has secured a $13 million seed investment to develop its initial pilot projects.
Opportunities
Applications are open for Blue Ventures 2025. While the priority application date has passed, the application is still open until the end of February.
The Massachusetts Climatetech Studio, a 16-week program starting April 2, 2025, offers entrepreneurs a $15,000 stipend and access to a $250,000 prize pool to commercialize climate technologies, with applications due by February 28, 2025.
The VentureWell Ocean Enterprise Accelerator for Spring 2025 has opened applications. The NOAA-funded accelerator aims to empower early-stage ventures to drive the future of the blue economy. The application deadline is March 5th.
If you are actively working in the field of coastal climate resilience, UC Santa Cruz is offering a course entitled “Practical Solutions for a Resilient Future” beginning on March 20th.
The NYC Offshore Wind Innovation Hub is accepting applications for their 2025 accelerator program until March 21st.
The Ocean Community Challenge is a global open innovation initiative seeking market-ready solutions to critical ocean challenges, and has opened their applications until March 31st.
Hatch Blue has opened applications for their Blue Carbon+ Challenge taking place in Singapore in May. The application for the accelerator is April 1st.
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center's CriticalMass program offers grants up to $1,000,000 to climatetech startups for deployment-scale projects, with the current Request for Information for Project Partners open until April 9, 2025.
There is an open call for side events at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice in June. Applications for in-person side events at the conference venue are due by March 14, and applications for off-site or virtual events are due April 21.
As of January 21st, applications are open for call for projects issued to the scientific community throughout the European Economic Area (EEA) on the topic of Ocean and Coastal Ecosystems.
APelago has opened applications to their 2025 Accelerator Programs. Apply here, and find more information below:
There is the full program, which is 5-months (Q1-Q3) for idea, pre-seed, and seed-level blue economy startups. It includes continuous structured support, expert coaching, intensive onsite workshops in Turku, access to the A'Pelago ecosystem, and a startup booth at the A'Pelago Initiative.
The venture track is a 3-5 day intensive program (Q2-Q3) for seed and growth-stage ventures, which includes 1-to-1 support sessions, pitch workshops, and visibility opportunities at the A'Pelago Initiative.
The 'Our Shared Ocean' Mobility and Travel Grants 2025 program offers funding to support research conferences, training courses, and research visits, primarily for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in partnership with Irish institutions. Submission deadlines are February 28, April 11, June 13, September 5, and November 7, 2025.
Hatch Blue, an aquaculture and alternative seafood investor, is looking for startups to join their accelerator program, in which they will invest $75,000 in each successful applicant.
Apply to Katapult’s Ocean Accelerator program that is designed to guide founders through complex entrepreneurial issues, add structure, and help raise a startup’s next round.
Apply to the TMA Blue Tech Incubator program.
Students and entrepreneurs can enter the Monaco Ocean Protection Challenge to create innovative solutions that have a measurable positive impact on the ocean.
Fair Carbon has launched a Blue Carbon Academy that aims to help with the fine-tuning of the design of a Blue Carbon project.
Events
The Ocean Nexus is hosting a webinar entitled “Making Waves for Ocean Justice: Data to Policy” on February 19th at 2PM ET.
On February 20th, join the webinar to introduce the Open Ocean Project.
Ocean Visions has announced their 2025 Biennial Summit taking place in Vancouver, Canada, March 11-13th.
Register for this webinar for The Planet Ocean Fund to learn about their investing in scalable solutions across nutrition, energy production, carbon capture, and ocean plastics.
The Hydrospatial Infrastructure & Blue Economy Summit, part of the Geospatial World Forum 2025 in Madrid, Spain, will take place on April 24-25, 2025, focusing on the digitalization of ocean economies; register by April 15th.
The One Ocean Science Congress will be in Nice, France, for June 4-6.
The 2025 UN Ocean Conference will also be in Nice, France on 9 June - 13 June.
The 2025 People and the Sea Conference will be taking place from 24-27 of June, with the theme focusing on “tensions, trade-offs, and transformations for the Ocean Decade and beyond”.
The EAHN Thematic Conference on September 10-13th will be focusing on “The Built Ocean”. They have an open call for papers for the conference.
Learning
The "blue economy" concept, introduced during the 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference, emphasizes sustainable ocean-based economic development, positioning oceans at the core of strategies to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable growth. In critique of this term and what it has come to be, Nnimmo Bassey critiques the "blue economy" concept in this piece, arguing that treating oceans as economic assets leads to overexploitation and environmental degradation, and advocates for prioritizing ecological preservation over profit-driven approaches.
Check out this short film, “Eyes On The Seafloor”.
Scientists are exploring ways to remove carbon dioxide from the ocean to help slow climate change, but verifying how much CO2 is actually removed is difficult and expensive. This study looks at challenges in measuring ocean-based carbon removal and suggests ways to make the process more affordable and transparent.
Inequality is widespread in ocean management, yet social equity is often overlooked in policies and decision-making. This study outlines steps to assess and improve fairness in ocean governance, ensuring that sustainability efforts are more inclusive, just, and effective.
This article discusses the accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice due to global warming, highlighting the potential crossing of critical climate tipping points. It emphasizes the need for rapid decarbonization, carbon dioxide removal, and the exploration of interventions such as spatial protections, pollution management, ice management, surface albedo modification, and solar radiation modification to preserve Arctic sea ice and maintain global climate stability.
Companies doing the work
BlueSeeds is working to address the problem of the lack of financing in marine conservation by developing alternative financing solutions and helping coordinators of conservation projects implement them on the field.
OceanWell is developing a subsea water farm that uses ocean pressure to power the reverse osmosis process and produce freshwater.
Oshen aims to use autonomous micro-vessels for en-masse ocean data collection.