October 2025 Edition
A monthly round-up of news and trends important to the AltaSea community.
AltaSea Community Spotlight
This past weekend, hundreds of people joined us on the AltaSea campus for Blue Hour 2025. The focus of this year’s event was blue foods, and attendees enjoyed catering by local seafood legend Dustin Trani as well as sustainable blue food pavilions featuring delectable ocean-based bites created by both master chefs and culinary students from Harbor College.
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From AI-powered climbing robots to autonomous underwater vehicles, emerging marine technology was showcased on Tuesday, Oct. 7, at AltaSea, the 35-acre oceanfront campus at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.
The event IGNITE22 is offered annually and billed as a “first of its kind” global technology showcase for innovations designed to power the ocean-based economy, also known as the blue economy.
This year’s event, hosted by AltaSea tenant Braid Theory, showcased top innovators, exhibitors and industry leaders with demonstrations designed to shape the future of ocean technology.
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Eco Wave Power Global (NASDAQ: WAVE) (“Eco Wave Power” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that U.S. Congresswoman Nanette Barragán (CA-44) visited the Company’s onshore wave energy pilot station at AltaSea in the Port of Los Angeles, the first wave energy installation of its kind in the United States. The visit underscores the enormous potential for wave energy to become a major renewable energy source for U.S. coastal communities.
“I am here at the first onshore wave energy installation in the country. This pilot project, located at AltaSea in my district, shows how we can turn wave energy into electricity and provide clean, reliable power for our communities,” said Barragán.
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Marine biologist, diver, and environmentalist Sylvia Earle has dedicated most of her life to exploring our oceans. But even after logging more than 7,000 hours underwater, she says there’s still a lot that remains undiscovered.
“The deeper you go in the ocean, the less we know,” she said at the TIME100 Climate Leadership Forum on Sept. 24. “It’s like diving into the history of life on Earth.”
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Philippe Cousteau, oceanographer, environmentalist and grandson of the French explorer Jacques Cousteau, joins CBS News to discuss climate change and its effect on the ocean.
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Steve Oldham is CEO of Captura. Captura develops Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) technology that removes CO₂ from seawater, triggering the ocean to draw more CO₂ from the air to rebalance. With CO₂ concentrations ~150× higher in seawater than air, Captura’s closed-loop process uses electrodialysis to create acid and base on site—no added chemicals, no waste—and can run largely on off-peak renewable energy.
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Join UrgentSEA
No matter what is going on in the world, the oceans continue to bring waves to shore. Here at AltaSea, we look towards the ocean for both solutions and inspiration—the oceans don’t stop, and neither do we.
AltaSea remains committed to supporting science-based solutions to climate change—solutions that both protect the oceans and benefit local communities. But we can’t do it without your support. Please make a tax-deductible donation and join UrgentSEA, our new membership campaign, today.
Blue Hour Auction
You could win:
- A 10-day Lindblad Expedition to the Galápagos Islands
- Up to $10,000 toward your next unforgettable event at AltaSea’s Land’s End
- A luxurious stay-cation at Terranea Resort, Palos Verdes
- A weekend getaway to The Brando – French Polynesia Private Island
- A Royal Caribbean International Cruise for two
- A stay at the Calamigos Guest Ranch and Beach Club
- An 18-Hole Golf Experience
- Fly in style on Delta Air Lines
- AND MUCH MORE!
Upcoming Events
Saturday, October 18 at 10:00am
You're invited to AltaSea to learn about Artificial Intelligence and how it is impacting innovators in the Blue Economy
Join us for an exciting morning at the intersection of ocean innovation and artificial intelligence. “Charting the Course of AI in the Blue Economy” brings together pioneering entrepreneurs, AI experts, and sustainability advocates to explore how emerging technologies are transforming our relationship with the ocean. With speakers from Clean Earth Rovers, Kelp Ark, and Sperra, this open house is your chance to dive into real-world applications of AI that are shaping the future of the blue economy.
What’s the “Blue Economy,” and What Does AI Have to Do with It?
Marine Science
The world’s oceans have failed a key planetary health check for the first time, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, a report has shown.
In its latest annual assessment, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity had crossed a critical threshold for marine life.
This makes it the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting scientists to call for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and other human-driven pressures that are tilting the Earth out of a habitable equilibrium.
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Plastic debris has been identified as a major global environmental threat, with microplastics now recognized as a persuasive contaminant in marine ecosystems. These particles, ranging from 0.15 to 5 millimeters, are found across all oceans, with concentrations varying between 0.002 and 62.50 items/m and a global mean abundance of 2.76 items/m (Mutuku et ai., 2024). Their effects extend across marine organisms and humans, raising growing concerns for aquaculture.
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From the bellowing songs of whales to the clicks and pops of fish species, marine life communicates with sound in ways that science is just beginning to understand. Coral reefs, with their dazzling biodiversity, are especially noisy places.
Until now, however, scientists have lacked a reliable method to untangle these soundscapes and connect specific sounds to individual fish species. A new study has changed that.
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Sustainable and Innovative Business
A new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has identified 4,500 acres off the Texas coast as prime Aquaculture Opportunity Areas, ripe for cultivation by producers aligned with the agency’s stated goals of promoting “seafood competitiveness, food security, and economic growth.” This week is “Aquaculture Week” at the federal agency under the Department of Commerce.
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The U.K. Seafood Innovation Fund (SIF) and U.K. Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) have released a new case study on Scottish kelp farming which the organizations say could represent a “step-change for the Scottish kelp industry.”
The project was led by Isle of Skye, Scotland-based kelp producer KelpCrofters, and gave researchers an opportunity to study three key challenges that affect the emerging Scottish kelp industry: limited harvest windows, rapid biofouling, and a lack of processing infrastructure for harvested kelp.
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GIST Impact, a leading sustainability data and analytics provider, and HUB Ocean, a Norway-based foundation advancing ocean science and data infrastructure, today announced a strategic partnership to provide investors with usable, science-backed data and insights on ocean-related risks and impacts.
GIST Impact and HUB Ocean will work with investors to test the new datasets with the aim of refining and co-creating tools that are scientifically robust, aligned with TNFD, and immediately actionable to support investment decision-making and reporting.
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Sea Quester is supported by research grants from the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF), which funds their experimentation and requires regular data collection. One such project involves compound analysis of kelps grown across different Alaskan regions.
Every month, Sea Quester measures kelp growth rates on their lines, tracking biomass development to forecast yields for buyers.
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Education
A fun science lesson and video on weather and climate for kids in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade!
Weather is the day-to-day variation of the atmosphere’s condition locally. Climate is the variation of weather conditions over long periods of time, usually years.
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Thirteen teams from across the United States are set to embark on a journey toward commercialization as part of this year’s StartBlue Ocean Enterprise Accelerator program at University of California San Diego.