For the last four years, my team at Tidal has been developing machine learning and underwater perception tools to provide unprecedented visibility into aquatic environments and ecosystems. Our oceans are essential to the livelihoods and economies of people globally, so our goal has always been to make our technology available to organizations that are as passionate about sustainability and ocean health as we are.

Today I’m delighted to share another promising step in this direction. Tidal is now working with Cognizant Ocean to make our insights available to their aquaculture and ocean-based customers. Cognizant will use its software and systems integration expertise to make Tidal’s data and insights available to ocean-based businesses that want to improve the sustainability and efficiency of their operations. While our collaboration is initially focused on aquaculture businesses, we’re exploring opportunities to make Tidal's insights available to a broad range of organizations working in Blue Transportation, Blue Energy, and Blue Carbon.

Piloting and prototyping around the world

_{The Tidal team working with our innovation partner, Mowi, in Norway}

Our work with Cognizant follows years of prototyping and piloting our technology around the world. For the last few years we’ve been working with Mowi, a sustainable salmon producer in Norway, as well as aquaculture experts in Chile and Japan to learn how our new camera, sensing and AI powered technologies might help the aquaculture industry become more efficient and sustainable. Using our tools, Mowi has been able to get a much clearer picture of what is happening under the water. For example, they can now detect and interpret fish behaviors and environmental factors, like temperature and oxygen levels, and track changes over time. These insights have helped them make better decisions about fish welfare, health, and feeding.

_{Tidal’s underwater camera and sensing technology detects and interprets fish behaviors and environmental factors, like temperature and oxygen levels, and tracks behavior changes over time}

In addition to working with aquaculture experts, we’ve also explored how Tidal’s tools could help ocean researchers investigate the carbon sequestration potential of seagrass. Our experiments in Fiji and Indonesia taught us how best to deploy ocean sensors to monitor natural ecosystems, how to process the data, and which data sources are most impactful. We used AI-enhanced physics-based modeling, remote sensing, and local data collection in ways that have never been successfully combined before, and we now have promising signs that Tidal’s technology can be used to quantify the carbon sequestration potential of seagrass beds.

We hope Tidal’s technology might someday help measure, model, and predict the carbon sequestration capacity of other marine environments, providing a safe way to remove billions of tons of CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere. If equipped with the right data, we could track our progress and, eventually, even build out effective carbon credit marketplaces.

_{Tidal’s computer vision models create three-dimensional images of sea grass bed captured by Tidal’s stereoscopic camera in Indonesia and Fiji.}

Bringing Tidal’s learning and insights to more ocean-based businesses

Our new collaboration with Cognizant means we can now bring the insights and learning from our work around the world to a much greater number of ocean-based businesses. Tidal’s long term goal is to reduce the barriers to protecting the ocean and create a set of tools that can be used across a variety of industries — from marine biologists studying animal and plant life to logistics experts using wave simulation to chart carbon efficient shipping routes. This collaboration is an exciting step in this direction as we work together to decarbonize ocean-based industries and protect the ocean for future generations.