The number of service and data-focused bluetech companies in Canada increased by almost a third between 2020 and 2022, according to a new study sponsored by Dartmouth’s Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship, or COVE.

The Canadian Ocean Enterprise 2022 report is the second in a series of studies tracking businesses involved in what COVE Chief Executive Melanie Nadeau previously described as, “the platform, technology and services that allow monitoring of the ocean to happen.”

The new report found the number of such companies in Canada increased from 122 in 2020 to 160 this year, and discovered a general expectation among employers that their revenues and headcounts will continue to increase even as the global economy falters.

“There’s more general awareness around oceantech and ocean enterprise businesses more broadly,” said Nadeau in an interview Thursday. “And that’s been supported, of course, by organizations like the Ocean Supercluster in Canada.

“That generates this bigger ecosystem of businesses that are interested in the space.”

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is a federally backed organization that funds blue economy research and development work in partnerships with the private sector.

Another example cited by Nadeau of an entity that has fostered the growth of oceantech is the Ocean Startup Project, which runs the Ocean Startup Challenge competition for early-stage bluetech companies.

And while most of the companies surveyed in the report are located in British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, fully 23 percent are in landlocked provinces.

“Sometimes there’s this notion that ocean-based development must happen on either coast,” said Nadeau. “But we saw companies, for example, in Alberta that have a lot of expertise that can be used in marine environments.

“Same with places like Ontario who are surrounded by the Great Lakes. There are a lot of marine-based applications — shipping, et cetera — that are in what we traditionally think of as non-ocean-based provinces.”

Also reflecting a growing focus by Canadian oceans companies on data gathering and analysis, Nadeau said, is their growing interest in operating in the Arctic and Antarctic. The largest portion of survey respondents, three quarters, listed Canada as a key market, but 25 percent also listed the polar regions. Companies could list as many key markets as they chose.

Nadeau said Canadian ocean technology tends to perform well in harsh, cold weather environments, making those regions more important markets for Canadian companies than their American and British contemporaries

“It’s a unique feature of some of the technologies and businesses that are being developed in Canada, which differentiates us internationally,” she said.

“And from my experience at COVE, we are the gateway to the Arctic. We have so many vessels that come through … that are doing work in the North.”