Ocean industries are rapidly changing. The shipping industry is starting to go green, aquaculture and fisheries are transitioning to the reality of warmer seas, maritime cyber security is addressing 21st century threats, and offshore wind energy production is catching on all over the world.

With opportunities for technology to interface with ocean industries plentiful, a new industry is emerging: blue tech.

Blue tech is at the intersection of ocean industry, sustainability, and technology. Last month, SeaAhead, a new company formed to encourage and accelerate bluetech startups that address ocean industries and ocean health, hosted the Global Bluetech Summit.

Investor Victor Vescovo, founder and lead diver of the Five Deeps Expedition, was one of the two keynote speakers at the event. He connected his work exploring the deepest point in each of five oceans (Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacfic, and Southern Ocean) to ocean science and the advancement of technology.

The other keynote speaker was Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, founder of Ocean Collectiv, a company that designs, builds, and implements ocean projects. Her talk ranged from extending the Green New Deal to oceans, to IMO 2020, a ruling from the International Maritime Organization that requires marine sector emissions in international waters to be reduced by more than 80 percent by switching to lower sulfur fuels, starting January 1, 2020.

Panel discussions ranged from the new approaches needed to simultaneously meet rising demand for seafood and conserve the ocean environment to an exploration of the changes taking place in the shipping industry, from the shipyard to the port.

SeaAhead leaders were thrilled with the diverse audience, and the connections they could see being made. “We got really good attendance from venture capitalist people. We got all these different stakeholders from the blue tech ecosystem talking to each other,” said David Hirschman from SeaAhead. “There are plenty of shared needs and goals.”