SeaSense

While global agriculture consumes roughly 70% of our planet's accessible fresh water, the ocean offers a path to food security that bypasses the freshwater crisis entirely. By building intelligence tools for regenerative mariculture, we are securing 'equitable access' by reducing the agricultural pressure on terrestrial water tables and diverting food production to the 97% of Earth's water that is currently under-utilised.

1. Efficiency -> Zero-Input Food Security: Traditional crops require irrigation; kelp and shellfish require only the cycles of the tide. The dashboard proves this efficiency by tracking nutrient density produced without a single litre of fresh water diverted from local communities.

2. Equity -> Democratising Ocean Intelligence: Large-scale industrial fishing has the capital for private data. This project provides community-scale farms with the same high-resolution Copernicus/Galileo data, ensuring equitable access to water also means equitable access to the information needed to survive in that water.

3. Protection-> Buffer Zones & Desalination: Kelp forests naturally filter water and can mitigate the impact of runoff. The dashboard monitors water quality to protect near-shore areas, ensuring that the water remains efficient for both nature and local human use.

Overview

SeaSense is a space-to-earth farming assistant that brings satellite ocean intelligence directly into the hands of seaweed and shellfish polyculture farmers. By combining remote sensing, ocean forecast data, and farm management workflows, Seafood helps farmers plan cultivation cycles, predict growth windows, and mitigate environmental risks with data-driven confidence.

The core problem SeaSense addresses is the information gap between large-scale ocean dynamics and daily farm decisions: many small and medium aquaculture operations lack timely, localised data on temperature, turbidity, currents and harmful algal blooms. SeaSense matters because improved situational awareness reduces crop losses, increases yields, and enables resilient polyculture systems that can deliver higher ecological and economic returns. The main value proposition is actionable, localised recommendations derived from satellite and forecast data tailored specifically for seaweed and shellfish polyculture practices.

Features & Functionality

SeaSense provides layered satellite and model-derived maps (sea surface temperature, turbidity/chlorophyll, wave height and current forecasts) overlaid on farm locations, combined with a cultivation calendar that suggests seeding, spacing and harvest windows. Farmers can create farm profiles, log deployments, track growth stages, and receive automated alerts for risk events such as temperature anomalies, bloom warnings, or storm surge forecasts.

Unique capabilities include a polyculture planner that models complementary timelines for seaweed and shellfish (e.g., kelp & mussels), an automated harvest optimiser that balances biomass and market timing, and integrations with farm IoT sensors and weather stations for ground-truthing. SeaSense also exposes APIs and exportable reports for regulatory compliance, buyer traceability, and collaboration with extension services.

Target Users & Use Cases

Primary users are small to medium coastal aquaculture producers engaged in seaweed and shellfish polyculture, coastal extension agents, and farm managers transitioning to data-driven operations. Secondary users include research institutions, cooperative aggregators, and sustainability-focused buyers seeking traceability.

Use cases include: planning a seeding schedule by combining satellite-derived nutrient indicators with tidal forecasts; receiving early warning of low-oxygen zones that threaten shellfish; coordinating harvest and transport windows to meet buyer quality specs; and documenting environmental conditions for certification or grant applications. User research is still required to identify which groups would prioritise affordable, near-real-time ocean intelligence. Primary candidates include community-scale farms and small-to-mid-sized regenerative mariculture projects.

Development Process

Our goal for this hackathon is to architect a responsive, interactive dashboard that harmonises satellite telemetry with the multidimensional aspects of ocean farming. Currently, at the concept-ready stage, we are seeking developers to build the first functional bridge between Copernicus Marine layers and geolocated farm plots.

The Hackathon Challenge:

• Satellite-to-Plot Integration: Overlaying real-time sea surface temperature and chlorophyll levels onto specific community-scale mariculture coordinates.
• The Alert Engine: Drafting the logic for a cultivation calendar that triggers alerts for thermal anomalies or nutrient shifts.
• Spatial Fidelity: Solving the 'near-shore' challenge—tuning spatial resolution to provide meaningful intelligence for small-to-mid-sized farms.

We aren't just building a map; we are building a sensory nervous system for the ocean's most restorative farmers. We have the ecological mandate and the data pathways identified—now we need the engineers to bring the interface to life.

Business Model

SeaSense follows a tiered subscription model: a freemium tier with basic map views and alerts for hobbyists, paid tiers for commercial farms with advanced analytics, API access and multi-farm management, plus custom consulting for enterprise and cooperative deployments. Additional revenue streams include data credits for higher-frequency satellite products, partnership integrations with sensor vendors, and value-added services such as certification support and marketplace introductions.

External Links (TBA)

• Home Page Link
• Github Link (if applicable)
• Documentation Link (if applicable)

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Banner Image by Silas Baisch on Unsplash