Community spotlight: MarineLabs

The Victoria Tech Community Awards showcase the community of 1,000 companies and 17,000 workers who push innovation forward, and drive the city’s $4 billion tech economy. Our spotlight series highlights award finalists and winners so you can get to know them a little bit better. Read about other community members here.

Today, we’re featuring Dr. Scott Beatty, CEO of MarineLabs.

Describe your company.

MarineLabs is a coastal intelligence company and real-time data provider, transforming marine safety, and building climate-resilient coastlines. Founded in 2017, they’re a B.C.-based company offering the world’s highest resolution real-time wind, wave, and weather data as well as AI-driven insights from fleets of cloud-connected, rugged instruments.

MarineLabs’ data optimizes port and vessel operations; and long term data insights help communities prepare and adapt for coastal flooding and other hazards due to sea level rise and climate change driven weather volatility. Marine condition data and insights are made available to ports, maritime operators, and coastal communities through the CoastAware™ subscription service.

MarineLabs eliminates barriers to acquiring and accessing data as its customers don’t need to be experts in marine buoy operations, they simply subscribe to the data feeds.

What problem is your company solving and how is it solving it?

Although Canada has the longest coastline in the world, we operate only 41 real-time weather buoys, roughly 1 station per 1000km. This data scarcity exposes coastal communities and industries to undue short-term risks of marine accidents and to long-term climate change driven weather volatility and coastal flooding.

MarineLabs currently delivers data from a North America wide, ocean hardened, rapidly-deployable data service that endeavours to make all of Canada’s 10,000 navigational aids into real-time data stations, a true innovation that is transforming marine safety.

What’s a recent milestone or breakthrough your company is proud of?

Successful measurement of a 65 foot rogue wave off the coast of Ucluelet in late 2020--- the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded. This finding was initially published in Nature Scientific Reports and MarineLabs’ press release went viral in news outlets around the world, resulting in a media reach of 63M including Internationally recognized outlets CNN, BBC, Smithsonian, and National Post amongst many others. The press release was published in 175 locations and exposed to 475k Twitter followers.

MarineLabs also launched the first turn-key service that uses AI to detect, identify, and attribute vessel wakes, and proved the value for First Nations application with Tsleil-Waututh Nation, T’Sou-ke Nation (CBC news story ), and Lake Cowichan First Nation, for stewardship of traditional coastal regions.

MarineLabs’ instruments in Atlantic Canada measured the landfall of Hurricane Fiona in Atlantic Canada, showcasing the value of a coastline full of MarineLabs data for hurricane forecasting. It also provided real-time data on what was happening during the storm so the Canadian Coast Guard could make informed decisions in the event of an emergency.

What makes Victoria a great place to build a technology business?

Victoria offers a world class talent pool, amazing outdoor and lifestyle opportunities, and healthy and safe environment to live. With a thriving start-up ecosystem, Victoria routinely punches above its weight in tech. As a coastal technology company, its even better since we have coastlines and large ocean businesses and agancies all around us.

What is Victoria tech’s biggest hidden secret?

There are amazing and famous tech leaders, mentors, investors from all over the world who have chosen Victoria as a place to build their next companies and they fly under the radar. The more time one spends here, the more talent one finds.

What is your number one Victoria tech prediction for 2023?

Crypto is tanking and the new hot business is going be one that is profitable and makes real change. The Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies (COAST) https://canadacoast.ca/ is going to catalyze some incredible new collaborations in the ocean tech sector. Watch that space.

What local tech company or product excites you the most right now?

I’m biased but it is definitely MarineLabs. I live and breathe our tech every day, and we are continuing to make incredible strides toward transforming marine safety and building climate resilience.