Wednesday, September 23, 2026
11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Ship Point Pier, Ship Point, Wharf Street, Victoria, BC (open in Google Maps)
Free Event
231 Registered, as of Sep 23 10:55
Organizer(s): COAST (South Island Prosperity Partnership)
Sponsor(s): Innovate BC, Babcock Canada
Featuring: Association of BC Defence and Marine Industries (opens website), Ascent Systems Technologies, Barnacle Systems (opens website), Blue Robotics (opens website), Camosun Innovates (opens website), Cascadia Seaweed (opens website), Cleohydron Innovation, Iris Dynamics (opens website), Ocean Diagnostics (opens website), Open Ocean Robotics (opens website), Rainhouse Manufacturing (opens website), Rising Tide Boat Works (opens website), Roper Resources, Royal Canadian Navy (opens website), SEAMOR Marine (opens website), Shift Coastal Technologies (opens website), Think Sensor Research (opens website), UVic Centre for Aerospace Research
A drop-in showcase of ocean technology on Victoria's Inner Harbour, pitched at the general public rather than at the sector. COAST describes it as a live, interactive showcase, and the format is literally that: companies bring their equipment to the pier and run it, with the people who built it standing beside it. The roster is now published and runs to nineteen exhibitors, spanning uncrewed surface vessels and subsea robotics, ocean sensors and microplastics sampling, AI whale detection, marine renewable energy and multi-day storage, and advanced manufacturing for the sector. The Royal Canadian Navy is bringing the CU179 Peregrine, its newest NATO Class II uncrewed aerial system, and Babcock Canada is running virtual-reality submarine lessons. The showcase is held outdoors on Ship Point Pier. COAST is an initiative of the South Island Prosperity Partnership, sponsored by Innovate BC and Babcock Canada.
Anu's Take
'Blue economy' normally turns up as a phrase inside a funding announcement. This is the version where the companies bring their equipment to the pier and the people who built it stand next to it. COAST has since published the full roster, nineteen of them, and the first edition put 210 registrations on the same pier last October as part of an ocean-mapping conference, so moving it inside Tech Week should widen that a fair bit.
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Published Tuesday, August 11, 2026 by Anu Jolliffe on LinkedIn