Where Nova Scotia's ocean opportunity lies

A Nova Scotia company can help a fish farmer in Iceland waste less feed. An instrument built in Halifax can measure underwater noise at an American wind farm. Both businesses can grow without Nova Scotia catching another fish.

This is the ocean opportunity I find most promising: using our research and experience at sea to build products that people elsewhere will buy. Fisheries, aquaculture and offshore energy can grow alongside those businesses, providing customers and problems worth solving.

In my review of Nova Scotia's Lost Century, I agreed with Ian Thompson's call for greater ambition and his focus on the ocean. I wanted more detail about how we get there. Looking at businesses here and elsewhere suggests some specific places to invest.

Marine activities already generate about $5.76 billion in Nova Scotia's GDP and support roughly 55,500 jobs, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada's estimates for 2024. Growing that economy means making different choices in different industries. Selling software abroad, expanding a fish farm and building offshore wind all draw on the ocean, but need different customers, investment and approvals.

All dollar figures below are Canadian dollars. Foreign financial comparisons use 2024 annual exchange rates.

Ocean technology: grow beyond the limits of our own resources

Ireland gives us a useful view of the commercial technology industry. Its Ocean Economy Report 2025 separately tracks marine sensors, software, communications, instruments and related services. It estimates that these businesses generated about $309 million in sales in 2024, contributed $125 million in value added, and employed 1,106 people. Value added measures what businesses contribute after paying for goods and services they buy from others.

Between 2019 and 2024, the industry's revenue grew 86% in euros, before adjusting for inflation; employment grew 59%. The report links growth to work for offshore renewable energy and aquaculture. Irish businesses can sell to those industries wherever projects are built.

I couldn't find a current public series for Nova Scotia that separates ocean-technology sales, exports and employment in the same way. Invest Nova Scotia describes more than 300 ocean-related companies, but that broader count doesn't tell us whether technology firms are growing faster or slower than Ireland's.

Invest Nova Scotia and the province's statistics staff should work with industry to publish those figures annually, using stable definitions and protecting individual company data. Ireland combines official statistics, business surveys and company accounts. We could use a similar approach to see whether our investment in research and facilities is producing growing commercial businesses, and where they are struggling.

Our advantage in developing ocean products

Building a reliable underwater instrument requires more than good electronics. Its designers need to know how sound travels through water, how currents affect measurements, and what happens after months in salt water. They also need somewhere to test it and someone who needs the results enough to pay.

We have several parts of that process close together. Dalhousie's ocean research includes the Ocean Frontier Institute and Ocean Tracking Network. The Bedford Institute of Oceanography brings federal ocean, seabed and fisheries science to Dartmouth. Researchers train people who can take that knowledge into companies.

At COVE's Stella Maris facility, companies can put equipment in the water, collect data and make changes using nearby workspace. Shared testing facilities can help a small company discover a fault before it has shipped a product overseas.

There are already businesses making use of marine expertise here. JASCO Applied Sciences has instrument engineering and production facilities in Halifax and has done acoustic assessment work for the Vineyard Wind project in the United States. Its work helps developers understand the effects of underwater sound on marine life.

ReelData announced an expanded agreement with Iceland's Samherji after trials of its fish-feeding technology. The software is designed to help farms avoid overfeeding while giving fish enough food to grow.

Those capabilities can serve shipping, defence, seafood production and energy development. The products could be equipment, software, new materials or services. What connects them is the need to understand conditions at sea and prove that a solution works there. Nearby research, test sites and experienced customers can make that development easier.

Turn research into products customers will buy

Woods Hole, Massachusetts, shows how research and a demanding customer can produce an export business.

Researchers there developed REMUS, a family of small underwater vehicles that can carry instruments and operate without a person aboard. The REMUS 600 received US Office of Naval Research funding to meet naval needs for longer missions, more equipment and greater depth. Its inventors helped establish Hydroid in 2001 to manufacture the vehicles commercially.

By March 2025, manufacturer HII reported more than 700 REMUS vehicles sold in over 30 countries.

The navy supplied a problem and funding. Researchers supplied technology, and Hydroid became the business that could manufacture and support it for customers elsewhere.

Broader research supports funding that early development stage. Sabrina Howell's study of US energy research grants used ranked funding applications to estimate the effect of receiving an award. Early awards increased later investment, patenting and revenue, with the evidence pointing to money for prototypes as an important reason. A working product can give customers and investors something concrete to assess.

Nova Scotia already has a version of this approach. COVE's 2026 naval technology challenge, backed by Thales Canada and ACOA, offered successful applicants $187,500 and input from naval end users. Companies retain their intellectual property. Solutions may lead to purchases through the support program for Canada's Arctic patrol and joint support ships.

COVE could recruit another group of buyers from ports, shipping, seafood and energy, using its existing industry relationships. The first commitment to seek is access to a real operation: a vessel, farm, terminal or processing line where a company can test its product with the people who would use it.

Each participating buyer should also name someone responsible for the project and identify money it could spend on a successful product. COVE and the buyer can then publish the problem, invite competing proposals and arrange the trial. That would give founders an opportunity they can respond to, rather than asking them to develop technology and search for a customer afterward.

Trial funding should cover staff time, installation and interruption to normal work, so participating is worthwhile for the buyer too. Smaller operators with the same problem could share a trial. Existing research programs can help finance the prototype while the buyer contributes operating time, equipment access or cash.

The purchase decision should be planned with the trial. The buyer sets the performance and safety requirements, the company keeps the rights needed to sell elsewhere, and both agree who decides whether the result is good enough to buy. Public buyers should involve purchasing staff before advertising a trial, so companies know how a successful test could lead to a contract. For COVE and its funders, the useful results to report are purchases after trials and sales to subsequent customers.

Seafood: grow production and earn more from the catch

In seafood, we have a clearer starting point: Nova Scotia exported $2.4 billion in 2024. Iceland and Norway show how much larger ocean food industries can become.

Sources: Nova Scotia, Iceland fisheries plus aquaculture, and Norway. Foreign values use 2024 annual exchange rates from the Bank of Canada and DNB. These are export receipts, not GDP or profit; product mixes differ.

Norway's scale owes much to aquaculture, which supplied 74% of its seafood export value that year. Nova Scotia's largest seafood export was lobster. Reaching Norway's total would require exports more than nine times our current level. Aquaculture expansion and earning more from existing landings are two distinct ways to grow.

How much aquaculture could we support?

Norway's farming industry is nearly 150 times our size by output. Comparing production in the same year makes the gap clear:

Sources: Nova Scotia's revised 2024 aquaculture figures and Norway's 2024 industry statistics, tables 19, 23 and 25. Norway's figure sums harvested fish and shellfish sold for consumption; Nova Scotia's includes restocking. Both exclude seaweed. Almost all the Norwegian total is salmon and trout.

Norway has a much larger coastline: about 101,000 kilometres including islands, compared with Nova Scotia's roughly 13,300 kilometres. Coastline measurements depend on how closely maps follow every inlet, so they aren't a precise measure of farming space. Norway also has deep fjords and sheltered waters. Research on its coastal conditions describes the combination that supports salmon farming: suitable temperatures, protection from waves, and currents that supply oxygen to fish in cages.

Nova Scotia has suitable farming areas, but expanding salmon production involves real constraints. The province's coastal classification assessment identifies extreme cold and insufficient depth as limits. Its maps rate areas separately for salmon, trout, mussels and oysters, helping operators choose a species that suits the location.

I queried the salmon map's underlying data. About 236,000 hectares fall in depth classes of 20 metres or more and receive a “Good” overall rating. Each mapped cell covers about one hectare. That gives us a physical starting point for estimating scale, rather than extrapolating from coastline length or another province's output.

A local farm proposal provides the other half of the calculation. DFO's review of four proposed St. Mary's Bay sites describes leases of about 80 hectares each, holding up to 750,000 fish, with an average harvest weight of 4.8 kilograms. Those are proposed operating parameters, not demonstrated results.

Allowing for 20% losses and a two-year cycle including empty-site time gives about 1,440 tonnes per farm per year. Both are assumptions for this estimate. The proposal anticipated a shorter growing cycle, but using its fastest schedule would make the estimate too optimistic.

My calculations from the provincial grid and DFO-reviewed proposal. Output uses unrounded farm equivalents; displayed farm counts are rounded. The percentages are development assumptions, not measured availability. These are total production scenarios for the selected area, including any existing farms, not additions to today's output.

For an initial planning exercise, I would examine roughly 20,000–40,000 tonnes of annual salmon production. That requires finding about 15–30 workable sites across the screened area. It would be a substantial increase even against today's combined fish-and-shellfish output, while leaving shellfish, land-based farming and more distant offshore sites outside the estimate.

The assumed footprint has some precedent: Norwegian research reported farms, anchoring and safety areas occupying about 0.5% of coastal waters inside its baseline. Our denominator is narrower, covering only water that passed the screening above. This helps put the footprint in perspective; it does not establish how much Nova Scotia can safely farm.

The decisive uncertainty is whether those 15–30 sites can operate together without unacceptable effects. The map does not fully assess currents, waste dispersal, wild salmon or every competing use. Nor have I fitted contiguous leases and their separation distances within it. Site surveys and area-wide modelling could move the estimate substantially in either direction.

DFO's St. Mary's Bay review shows why the lease boundary is not the environmental boundary. It found overlapping potential exposure areas for waste and treatments, alongside concerns about lobster, scallops and escaped salmon. The province and operators should use those tests to identify which parts of the mapped area can support farms and how much production each can sustain.

Norway's experience also shows why those limits affect the business. Its 2026 aquaculture risk report records more than 54 million farmed salmon dying in cages in 2025. It rated the risk of lice-caused deaths among young wild salmon as high in two production areas and moderate in eight of thirteen. Warm water and more frequent lice treatments had worsened conditions. Production still grew by about 200,000 tonnes that year, but the environmental problems limit where further growth is allowed.

Under Norway's 2024 traffic-light decisions, six regions could increase permitted capacity, five held steady and two had to cut capacity by 6%. Growth depended on assessed effects of salmon lice on wild salmon. Nova Scotia should plan expansion across an area, including interactions between farms, so one operator's growth doesn't undermine another farm or the wild fishery.

We already have a way to turn suitable areas into business opportunities. The province's 2025 sector analysis describes over 700 hectares identified across Yarmouth County through the Argyle aquaculture pilot, for shellfish and marine plants. Sites were allocated through competitive proposals. Preparing areas in advance gives operators a defined opportunity to evaluate. Publishing sites taken up, approval times and eventual production would show whether the process is worth expanding elsewhere.

Growth can come from different species and from selling better farming technology abroad. Our companies can help Norwegian and other producers manage feeding, fish health and monitoring, even where Nova Scotia's own farming space is limited.

Build higher-value products

Iceland has also developed businesses that earn more from each fish landed.

Kerecis develops medical products from fish skin for treating wounds and repairing tissue. Its parent company, Coloplast, reported annual Kerecis revenue equivalent to roughly C$200 million in 2023/24, converted using the 2024 rates above.

There are less specialized opportunities too. Matís research on Icelandic whitefish processing describes markets for dried heads, fish oil and canned liver. Cheap geothermal heat helped the drying business. A Nova Scotia company would need to calculate whether its own energy, transport and processing costs leave a margin.

Nova Scotia's 2026–29 seafood strategy commits funding for an innovation hub with Perennia and the Centre for Marine Applied Research. Its proposed services include helping companies develop and test products. Processors could bring an available material and a prospective buyer; the hub could help test preservation, processing costs and product quality using shared expertise.

For small processors, collecting enough material consistently may be the first obstacle. A joint trial across several plants could establish whether there is enough supply, at an affordable collection cost, to serve a buyer year-round. The hub could organize that work before individual processors buy specialized equipment.

More processing will not always mean more value. Nova Scotia's 2024 seafood snapshot records about $1.03 billion in live lobster exports. Selling a high-quality live product can be an excellent business. Investment should improve the return from our catch, whether through better handling, less spoilage or a new product that customers want.

Offshore wind: a much larger investment, with harder conditions

Offshore wind deserves attention because it could create a substantial new export industry: electricity, alongside marine services and equipment. Established markets show that this is possible at large scale.

Source: IRENA's Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026, offshore wind table. A gigawatt is a measure of generating capacity; actual electricity output depends on how often the turbines run and at what power.

The Crown Estate reports that offshore wind supplied 19% of UK electricity in 2025, with a total industry workforce of about 40,000. Building that industry took decades of projects, suppliers and investment. Britain's long-term electricity-price contracts helped developers finance construction by reducing uncertainty about what they would earn.

Nova Scotia's Wind West plan models an initial 5 GW, slightly larger than the Netherlands' existing fleet. It assumes strong winds would support about 25 terawatt-hours of annual output. That is 25 billion kilowatt-hours to sell each year.

The plan estimates $30–50 billion to build the wind farms, plus $15–25 billion for transmission. Its model puts the cost of electricity delivered to Quebec at 17–24 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on tax credits and financing. The low end assumes subsidized loans at 1%. These are planning estimates, with substantial public support needed to reach the lowest price.

We have a strong wind resource and nearby ports. The commercial test is whether developers can deliver power at a price customers will commit to paying, including the cost of reaching them. Provincial and federal governments need to negotiate the transmission route and financing alongside long-term purchase agreements. Those commitments would let developers invest and give suppliers a credible schedule for hiring and equipment purchases.

Win the work we can already do

The 2025 Atlantic Canada wind supply-chain assessment found the following:

The assessment covers Atlantic Canada. It maps potential suppliers; it does not establish that every capability is available in Nova Scotia or that companies have won contracts.

We can see the division of work in the US Vineyard Wind project. Nova Scotia's government documented wind components being loaded at Woodside Wharf in Halifax Harbour. JASCO contributed acoustic assessment work. Meanwhile, DEME's contract covered specialist offshore transport and installation, using its vessel Orion.

Marine Renewables Canada and Invest Nova Scotia can connect these suppliers with developers and major contractors buying similar work elsewhere. Buyers can publish upcoming work and qualification requirements; local firms can then decide whether the missing certification, equipment or training is worth the cost. Export contracts can build experience before a Nova Scotia wind farm needs the same services.

A major-component factory deserves a separate investment case: committed orders over several years, a manufacturing partner, suitable port access and a credible cost of production. The province can pursue those investments while building on suppliers that have customers today.

Protect the fishing income we already earn

Offshore wind adds less to Nova Scotia's economy if it needlessly displaces productive fishing. Turbines, cables and construction zones can prevent boats from using some grounds, especially where fishers tow gear. NOAA identifies trawling and dredging as particularly exposed. Moving can mean longer trips, more fuel and crowding on other grounds.

Nova Scotia's regional assessment found that fishing maps omitted vessels under 35 feet and could represent an entire trawling trip as one point. Some modelling treated missing data as evidence of little conflict. Those maps could make a busy fishing area look easier to develop than it is.

Before fixing project boundaries, governments and developers should work with fishers and Mi'kmaq organizations to fill those gaps, with protections for sensitive knowledge. Shared seasonal surveys should also address the report's gaps in bird movements. Several proposed farms need to be assessed together, so each developer cannot assume displaced fishing will simply move next door.

The results should determine project boundaries, turbine layouts and cable routes before developers commit to construction. Fishing income lost, local wages earned and contracts won all belong in the assessment of what Nova Scotia gains. The full construction budget will not stay here: turbines, specialist vessels and other imported equipment account for part of it.

Where I would put the effort first

Ocean technology offers the most flexibility. Companies can sell into shipping, defence, energy and seafood markets around the world, using research and testing facilities we already have. We should expand the opportunities for those companies to test with paying customers and measure whether they win repeat orders and exports.

Seafood offers growth from an established industry: suitable new farm sites, better handling and products that earn more from existing landings. The Argyle pilot and planned innovation hub give businesses places to start. Their results should determine which investments we repeat.

Offshore wind could bring the largest construction investment, but it needs buyers and transmission on a scale we have yet to secure. We should pursue those agreements while helping local suppliers win work in markets already building projects.

I think the ocean can support a much more prosperous Nova Scotia. The strongest reason is that our businesses can serve a far larger market than our own waters. We should give more of them the chance to prove they can.