Welcome to this week’s Sunday Briefing. In this issue:

Now, on to today’s briefing.

-Emily, [email protected]

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A machine learning web app that identifies whales and dolphins from underwater sound recordings will carry Canada’s colours to the Ocean Hackathon 10 Grand Finale in Brest, France, on December 10. The app, called Sea Who’s Calling, took top spot at the Victoria edition of the 48-hour innovation sprint, hosted by COAST, an initiative of the South Island Prosperity Partnership, and co-hosted by Ocean Networks Canada.

Seventeen university students took part in Victoria, the only Canadian edition, working in four teams on ocean data challenges. The winning group of B.C. students (Olivia Whitelaw, Grace Bertozzi, Pranav Rajesh Krishnan, Jossie Yan and Leanne Farmer) pitched their tool as a way to help the Royal Canadian Navy plan exercises while limiting the impact on marine mammals. According to the team, it identified more species, and did so more accurately, than bioacoustics models from Google DeepMind, Cornell’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and the Earth Species Project in tests on expert-labelled Ocean Networks Canada recordings.

The other three projects were the Super El Niño Tracker, which follows the phenomenon’s effects on the Salish Sea and northeast Pacific; SEAsk: Know your Sail, an onboard ferry kiosk that turns live ocean data into 3D visuals; and FinFinders, a fish identifier for underwater camera footage.

“Each project has the potential to move from concept to product, and we’re excited to support each team if they wish to further develop their ideas,” said COAST Executive Director Jason Goldsworthy. Last year’s Victoria winner, Ocean Drift, placed second out of 57 teams worldwide at the finale.

🌊 Hello, Germany: ONC welcomed a German-Canadian Parliamentary Group delegation to UVic’s Marine Technology Centre, highlighting joint work with German partners on the P-ONE neutrino telescope and Solid Carbon research into storing carbon dioxide in subseafloor basalt.

🚢 We will rock you: Victoria’s Open Ocean Robotics signed an MOU with ENVGO to integrate their solar-powered and high-speed hydrofoiling uncrewed surface vessels under one command-and-control platform.

📚 Green eggs and ham: Victoria studio Be The Monster released Dr. Seuss: Learn & Play, an ad-free learning app that adapts 22 Dr. Seuss books into more than 100 games for children ages 2 to 8.

🌿 New from Mateína: A zero sugar, organic yerba mate that delivers clean energy — no crash, no weird ingredients. Just plant-powered fuel that works.*

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October 29 | Victoria Tech Nachos

A casual, no-frills monthly gathering for Victoria’s tech community — no speakers, no sponsors, just good conversation and shared nachos at Swans Pub. Show up, meet people, split the bill.

November 5 | ProductHub Victoria - Fall Event

We are a small, trusted room of Island product makers. Come see how your peers really build, test and ship product, and leave with ideas you can actually put to work. In this first meeting we will be hearing from the people behind Harvey AI, which is an internal tool used by PwC. We will learn how this tool combines domain expertise, enterprise controls and frontier AI models.

Have something or someone we should know about?

Reply or email [email protected] so we can work together to spotlight the lesser-known stories of Victoria's tech ecosystem.