SEA-SENSE is an EU-funded innovation project developing an integrated real-time monitoring system for European seaweed hatcheries and offshore farms.
Europe's seaweed aquaculture sector is expanding, driven by demand for sustainable marine biomass. But operators face persistent challenges: environmental conditions vary unpredictably, monitoring is often manual and labour-intensive, and the data that does get collected is siloed in incompatible formats. Hatchery managers need precise control over water quality to ensure consistent seed production. Offshore farmers need remote visibility into conditions at sites that are difficult and costly to visit. Without continuous, standardised monitoring, the sector struggles with crop losses, inefficient operations, and limited traceability from seed to harvest.
Design, build, and validate a sensor-based monitoring kit suitable for both hatchery and offshore seaweed cultivation environments. The kit measures key environmental parameters — including water temperature, light intensity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and nutrient levels — providing continuous data where manual sampling currently falls short.
Develop a seaweed aquaculture monitoring data model using the NGSI-LD specification, enabling interoperability with FIWARE-based platforms and other marine data ecosystems. This ensures that monitoring data can be shared, compared, and integrated across different sites, operators, and systems.
Connect the monitoring system to digital twin platforms, enabling real-time visualisation of environmental conditions at cultivation sites. Digital twin integration supports scenario-based decision making, helping operators anticipate and respond to changing conditions.
SEA-SENSE has received funding from the European Commission through the I3-4-SEAWEED programme (101161142), contributing to the EU's goals for sustainable blue economy innovation. The project is implemented by Synchro SRL.
SEA-SENSE works with industry partners who bring real-world seaweed cultivation expertise to inform system design and validate the monitoring platform in operational environments.
Ireland's only consultancy specialising in seaweeds. A female-led company with over twenty years of applied macroalgal research experience, providing biomass surveys, resource management, aquaculture services, laboratory analyses, and product development. ISC is SEA-SENSE's first deployment partner, piloting the monitoring system at their operations in the West of Ireland.
The project is developed by a team at Synchro SRL with expertise spanning sensor technology, data engineering, and aquaculture systems.