A Nova Scotia research startup is in the running for an international environmental prize worth more than C$1.7 million.
Halifax-based eOceans has been chosen by McGill University to compete in Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, which awards five grants of £1 million each: one for “protecting and restoring nature,” one for clean air initiatives, one for climatetech projects, one for the circular economy and one for oceans.
The winners will be selected from a field of 15 finalists, all of which will also join a year-long fellowship to help them scale their work. McGill is the prize’s Canadian partner.
Founded by biology PhD Christine Ward-Paige, who previously consulted for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, eOceans is an app for scientists to crowdsource oceans research data, such as for monitoring fisheries health, or tracking sharks and rays. Users can sign up for free and record their observations when they visit marine environments.
“At eOceans, we believe that every community, organization, team, business, etcetera should have equal access to a million-dollar team of scientists, and that they should be able to unite within and across interests to scale their power,” said Ward-Page in a social media statement.
End-users join under a fremium model and are enrolled in several research projects by default, with the option to join more. Researchers, meanwhile, also have access to a suite of analytics features and a dashboard for creating new projects. Since eOceans launched in 2018, its roughly 3,300 users have conducted more than 41,000 surveys for 170 projects.
“As an official nominator of the Earthshot Prize, McGill University is committed to supporting impactful solutions addressing environmental issues,” said Ward-Paige’s team in a press release. “eOceans was selected as one of McGill University’s nominations for the 2024 Earthshot Prize for its potential to mobilize citizens to study and monitor oceanic events.”
Ward-Paige has previously advocated for the oceans sector to adopt a definition of the blue economy that focuses more closely on ocean health, arguing that the blue economy and ocean economy are best understood as separate concepts. In particular, she proposes viewing the blue economy as including activities that bolster ocean health and community wellbeing, particularly in data-driven ways — an oceanic analogue to the green economy.
“How we define the blue economy matters to how it is tracked and also how we prioritize and invest in it,” she said last year. “We needed to define which activities are blue."
