NSF Seafood Engine in New England

Propelling Innovation, from Bait to Plate

The NSF Seafood Engine in New England breaks through bottlenecks across the seafood supply chain by utilizing solutions from New England’s world-leading tech sector.

The NSF Seafood Engine in New England, led by the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems, aims to revitalize a legacy industry through leveraging advanced technologies that reduce the national seafood deficit and strengthen every level of the seafood supply chain—from harvest to consumer delivery. The NSF Seafood Engine in New England will connect the region’s blue tech sector to its seafood industry to modernize operations, improve efficiency, and advance technical innovation. Together, these efforts will help improve the lives of small and medium firms across the New England coastline, unlock a $20B market opportunity in the American Seafood Industry and provide advanced sensing/digital twin capabilities across major ports on the U.S. East Coast.

Cross-Sector Partnerships & Stakeholder Alignment

At the heart of the NSF Seafood Engine strategy is mobilizing technological innovation across the seafood supply chain to achieve synergistic and cumulative impacts. This can only be achieved by bringing together the full spectrum of seafood industry stakeholders in all NSF Seafood Engine activities, thereby building bridges and catalyzing further innovations.

Use-Inspired Research & Development

Technological innovation that is grounded in the day-to-day operations and challenges of seafood industry members will have a direct pipeline to adoption. Seafood harvesters, processors, distributors, and marketers are therefore core collaborators in the NSF Seafood Engine research and development activities, building upon established and successful models of industry-science-government collaboration.

Translation of Innovation to Impact

As the seafood industry develops new solutions to critical challenges, New England’s vibrant tech sector is spurring innovations for other applications that can generate additional value if channeled into the seafood sector. The NSF Seafood Engine is engaging, organizing, and elevating blue tech companies who are developing tools that can improve safety, efficiency, and productivity across the supply chain.

Workforce Development

Experienced seafood industry members are essential to the NSF Seafood Engine’s efforts to address fundamental challenges, while its leaders of tomorrow will embrace, sustain, and evolve the innovations developed. Integrating technological tools into training of new industry members early in their careers is therefore critical to the success of the Engine.

Regional Engagement

The NSF Seafood Engine takes off from a foundation of cross-sectoral partnerships, projects, and programs that have not yet achieved their full impact due to limited scale and reach, but through the Engine will come together as a thriving innovation ecosystem. A key catalyst will be strategic engagement that unites elements within the NSF Seafood Engine and expands their reach, while bringing new partners to the ecosystem.

Strategic Regional Investment

The NSF Seafood Engine aims to jointly grow New England’s historical seafood industry and rising tech sector into even stronger and more profitable pillars of the regional and national economy. That growth will rely on an engaged and energized community of public, private, and philanthropic investors who join the NSF Seafood Engine in nurturing the symbiotic potential of seafood and technology.