The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Newlab have selected three pilots from over 60 submissions across 24 countries through the Global Ocean Innovation Challenge — an initiative designed to accelerate technology solutions that address critical bottlenecks in ocean conservation.
South East Asia’s oceans sustain over 700 million people and anchor nearly 90% of global aquaculture, yet less than a third of the region’s waters are formally protected. Vast marine areas remain under-monitored, leaving illegal fishing, habitat loss and enforcement gaps to persist — not because of intent, but because of scale, cost and a lack of real-time data.
Through the challenge, three pilots will be launched in 2026: Havoc from the US aims to deploy autonomous surface vessels for continuous marine protected area monitoring; blueOASIS from Portugal uses solar-powered acoustic stations and AI to detect vessel activity in real time; and Blurgs.AI from India — an analytics system that turns electronic fisheries monitoring data into decision-ready insights for large-scale fisheries management.
TNC CEO Jennifer Morris said, “Addressing overfishing and habitat destruction requires tackling the inadequate data and outdated monitoring systems that have long hampered effective conservation — challenges that demand technology-driven solutions deployed at unprecedented scale.”
The selected solutions include autonomous surface vessels for marine protected area surveillance, solar-powered acoustic stations that detect vessel activity in real time, and AI tools that translate industrial fisheries data into decision-ready insights. All three are designed around a shared constraint: today’s conservation systems still rely heavily on manual patrols and fragmented data.
Launching in June 2026, Havoc and blueOASIS will be deployed across Indonesia’s Savu Sea — a significant biodiversity hotspot — in collaboration with Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN), alongside government, research and local community partners. The Blurgs.AI pilot will draw on data from industrial fishing fleets operating across the Pacific.
Going beyond technology, this is an attempt to rewire how ocean protection is done: from periodic observation to continuous intelligence, and from isolated enforcement to coordinated, data-led stewardship.
If successful, these pilots could shape how marine protection is scaled across some of the most ecologically rich and operationally complex waters on the planet — where the cost of inaction is already being borne by coastal communities.