Boston Harbor Now praises "BlueTech Innovation Grant" program

The Massachusetts Seaport Economic Council this month launched a new “BlueTech Tech and Innovation Grant” challenge program offering potentially hundreds of thousands in funding to entrepreneurs, technology firms, and municipalities interested in developing innovative solutions to improve the economies of marine industries and coastal communities in the Bay State.

Building on the success of the council’s $450,000 Grand Challenge in 2018, the new program will offer grants supporting business or technology solutions that focus on sectors such as aquaculture, maritime monitoring or security, shipping, marine biotechnology, offshore renewable energy, commercial fishing, and more.

“The BlueTech Tech and Innovation Grant program will help our coastal communities prepare for a strong future, supporting new technologies and ideas that address their unique challenges and position the maritime industry for continued growth,” Governor Charlie Baker said in an announcement about the new grant program.

Aaron Toffler, Director of Policy for Boston Harbor Now, a non-profit organization that works in partnership with public, for-profit, and non-profit partners to plan, advocate, and activate a thriving waterfront, harbor, and the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park, praised the state for offering the new grant funding.

“We support the establishment of this funding to accelerate the development of high-impact maritime-related startups in areas such as aquaculture, nature-based solutions for climate resilience, green tech/offshore alternative energies for maritime applications, and maritime vocational education,’’ Toffler said.

In 2019, Boston Harbor Now produced a white paper entitled “Planning a 21st Century Harbor,” which encouraged the state to support investment in “bluetech” innovation, encompassing a wide range of ocean-related and -dependent technologies and services. Boston Harbor Now is a leading advocate for protecting and promoting the Designated Port Areas (DPAs) in Charlestown, Chelsea, East Boston, and South Boston that were established by the state in 1978 to maintain the waterfront and landside infrastructure needed to support water-dependent industrial uses such as boatyards, commercial fishing, international shipping, and all the diverse economic activity and innovation that they spin off.

Applications for the BlueTech Tech and Innovation Grant are available at https://innovation.masstech.org/seaport , and the deadline for submitting proposals is May 26, 2021.

The grant program is managed by the Innovation Institute at the MassTech Collaborative on behalf of the Seaport Economic Council, as was the previous Challenge in 2018.

The inaugural Grand Challenge in 2018 awarded over $450,000 to innovative projects that deployed “Internet of Things” connected technologies to provide high-tech data analysis in commercial fisheries, deploy distributed sensors to help track lobster populations, and create an online data portal to help researchers track tidal flows and other data points.