The Dartmouth-based Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship, or COVE, will host its annual Demo Day on Wednesday, with bluetech companies demonstrating their innovations off the facility’s dock.
The event will include 17 exhibiting companies from as far away as British Columbia and Denmark, and COVE said in a statement it expects about 400 private sector and government decision-makers from the international oceans community to attend. The Demo Day is the closing event of the Ocean Technology Council of Nova Scotia’s H2O Conference.
In addition to the main demo day stages, other COVE startups will also be showing off their technology from their manufacturing and incubator spaces in the converted Coast Guard base.
And concurrently with the Demo Day, COVE will host Pitch + Roll — an invitation-only event that will give 10 pre-selected companies the chance to pitch an audience of international bluetech investors.
Also launching as part of the festivities is a new mural at COVE by Mi’kmaq artist Lorne Julien. It is located in one of COVE's stairwells and depicts an eagle with its wings wrapped around a leatherback turtle and her hatchlings.
“When I painted the turtles I was thinking about how these amazing animals travel between the Caribbean and Nova Scotia and how turtles move between land and the ocean,” wrote Julien on his website. “This painting reminds us about connections, in the world, between the elements and how whatever we do as humans has implications on all other creatures in the world.”
The Demo Day will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m, with companies divided between three stages. More information can be found here.
In the meantime, here’s a look at the participating companies:
SHOWCASE STAGE
Jim Eisenhauer, CEO
Lunenburg, N.S.
Abco is an engineering and fabrication business.
Julie Angus, CEO
Victoria, B.C.
Open Ocean is developing solar-powered, ocean-going drones for marine data collection.
Greg Reid, CEO
St. John’s, Nfld.
Kraken, which trades on the TSX Venture Exchange, sells a range of autonomous vessels and sensor platforms.
Wenwen Pei, CEO
Halifax, N.S.
Marine Thinking is developing autonomous control technology for both crewed and unscrewed vessels ranging from communications systems to artificial intelligence suites.
Heaton Rosborough, President
Beechville, N.S.
Rosborough is a well-established maker of “semi-custom” boats.
Ian Estaphan Owen, CEO
Bristol, Rhode Island
Jaia sells inexpensive, modular drones for underwater data collection.
Henry Greene, CEO
Halifax, N.S.
Atlantic Towing provides towing services to the marine industry, such as operating tugboats.
BLUE STAGE
Erik Nobbe, CEO
Halifax, N.S., Sweden and Norway
Resqunit sells a backup buoy system for retrieving lost fishing gear.
Andrew Durrant, CEO
Edinburgh, Scotland
PicSea uses swarms of underwater drones to create photorealistic digital reconstructions of underwater equipment.
Inja Ma, CEO
Nanaimo, B.C.
SEAMOR sells a range of remotely operated underwater vehicles.
Fabian Wolk, CEO
Spanish, B.C.
Rockland sells equipment for measuring marine turbulence.
Aaron Stevenson, CEO
Halifax, N.S.
Ashored sells "rope-on-command" systems that can be retrofitted to existing fishing gear and release a buoy on command, returning the gear to the surface for retrieval.
Chandler Griffin, CEO
Melbourne, Florida
iSENSYS sells marine robots and data collection buoys.
INNOVATION STAGE
Adam Darling, Group Chairman
Great Yarmouth, U.K.
Applied Acoustics sells a range of acoustic technology for the marine industry, such as “seabed profiling” gear and equipment for the oil and gas sector.
Jérôme Bourassa, CEO
Sherbrooke, Que.
Qubic sells “quantum microwave transmitters and receivers” for remote sensing and communications.
Eric Jackson, President
Burnaby, B.C.
Cellula designs and builds a range of turn-key underwater robotics systems.
Peter Koldgaard Eriksen, business unit director for oceans
Trondheim, Norway
Norbit sells sonar equipment for both subsea and surface vessels.
