Introducing the Eight Bluetech Startups in BlueSwell’s Newest Cohort

In its fifth year, the BlueSwell accelerator program—a partnership between the New England Aquarium and SeaAhead—will support a new cohort of ocean sustainability startups addressing a variety of challenges such as marine debris, renewable energy, and climate change. The fifth cohort will be the program’s largest to date, hosting eight companies with substantial impact potential.

In 2020, the New England Aquarium and SeaAhead launched BlueSwell to support the creation and growth of startups that enhance ocean health, sustainable ocean industry, and global resilience. The program enables innovators to turn their ocean-focused concepts into profitable and sustainable businesses by leveraging SeaAhead’s bluetech domain expertise, network, and experience in building companies, and the Aquarium’s long history of using science developed by the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life to protect the ocean and marine animals.

Meet BlueSwell Cohort V

ARMADA Marine Robotics

ARMADA Marine Robotics is bringing scalable infrastructure to marine monitoring through an array of underwater drones, an efficient and flexible method to collect important ocean data.

Coastal Measures

Coastal Measures offers an AI-powered data hub that unifies data streams to gain unprecedented insight into environmental behaviors.

Crewless Marine Acoustics

Crewless Marine Acoustics provides sensors for uncrewed sea vehicles and acoustic monitoring stations that allow for acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and shipping traffic to ensure ocean noise pollution doesn’t negatively impact marine species.

Dottir Labs

Dottir Labs is building real-time sensor systems to monitor inland aquaculture and other aquatic environments. This helps safeguard ocean and water ecosystems while sustainably meeting global food demands.

Eddy Analytics

Eddy Analytics’ platform combines hydrodynamic simulations with biological data to enable new clarity for blue economy decision-makers. This technology can help optimize reef restoration success, create early warning systems for natural disasters, and more.

HydroPhos Solutions

HydroPhos Solutions utilizes filtration technology to extract phosphorus from wastewater and resell it in a form that is usable in fertilizer, addressing both eutrophication—a process where excessive nutrients cause an overgrowth of algae and other plants—and the global phosphorus shortage.

Kai Pono Solutions

Kai Pono Solutions is replacing conventional stormwater drainage with a high-performing filtration system. This provides a proactive approach to mitigating stormwater pollution by removing trash, harmful chemicals, and other pollutants from urban runoff.​

WATABOT

WATABOT is revolutionizing water quality management by integrating cutting-edge robotics and AI to provide real-time monitoring and early warning systems for harmful algal blooms and other water contaminants.

Supporting Innovation

The BlueSwell program provides each startup with $25,000 of funding and connections to leaders in industry, investment, academia, government, and NGOs. Over six months, the startup teams will also engage in a leadership- and business-focused curriculum and get individual mentorship from SeaAhead and the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, the Aquarium’s ocean, science, policy, and advising arm. Since BlueSwell started, 24 startups have gone through the program and have raised over $38 million in grants and investments.

The blue economy, the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, is an essential part of New England’s history and present. Our coastal communities rely on the ocean for jobs and food, making a healthy ocean critical for not only environmental resilience but the long-term economic resilience of the region. BlueSwell startups help prove that what’s good for  ocean health can also be good economic health.