Success Story

LOCATION

CA

Sausalito

TOTAL FUNDING

$1.3M

FUNDING AGENCIES

DOC - NOAA

Department of commerce: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Impact & Achievement

For offshore industries, the ability to locate, monitor, and retrieve equipment scattered across vast ocean spaces is both a logistical and environmental challenge. Blue Ocean Gear, a California-based technology company, set out to address this problem through its Smart Buoy platform—an intelligent tracking system originally developed to help commercial fishers prevent gear loss, reduce marine debris, and combat the costly and dangerous consequences of ghost fishing.

With support from the NOAA SBIR program, Blue Ocean Gear enhanced the utility of its Smart Buoys by integrating additional ocean condition sensors. These upgrades expanded the platform’s capabilities beyond basic gear tracking, enabling it to collect real-time sea surface temperature, wave height, and wave period data. The result is a low-cost, easily deployable sensing solution that complements traditional oceanographic tools and fills critical data gaps. By offering finer spatial resolution than satellite data and greater affordability than large-scale ocean sensors or drones, the Smart Buoy platform provides distributed, actionable intelligence to users across sectors.

As the buoy system evolved, so did its accessibility. Blue Ocean Gear developed user-friendly data interfaces, including integration with onboard vessel navigation systems, web dashboards, and open API access—making it easy for customers in diverse fields to tap into the platform’s real-time insights. These enhancements have enabled the company to enter new markets beyond commercial fishing, with recent sales to organizations in offshore wind, telecommunications, and meteorology. The same wave behavior data is now being explored for applications in coral reef restoration and maritime safety operations.

The momentum generated through SBIR support has accelerated the company’s commercial trajectory. In addition to expanding into adjacent markets, Blue Ocean Gear has partnered with seafood suppliers that use Smart Buoys to demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practices. These collaborations not only scale the company’s reach but also support broader ocean stewardship goals by promoting responsible and transparent resource use.

By evolving a focused solution for fishers into a versatile ocean monitoring platform, Blue Ocean Gear has positioned itself at the intersection of sustainability and innovation. SBIR funding was instrumental in enabling this leap—helping the company expand its sensor capabilities, improve data accessibility, and open doors to new markets while strengthening its impact on ocean health.

https://www.blueoceangear.com/