Grantmaking

SMTP awards over $1.9 million for innovative solutions to protect our oceans

Schmidt Marine Technology Partners (SMTP), a program of The Schmidt Family Foundation, recently awarded over $1.9 million in recurring grant funding to 15 groups developing innovative solutions to protect the ocean ecosystem. The funds will support projects that enable ocean research, promote habitat health, address plastic pollution, and maintain sustainable fisheries.

SMTP was founded in 2015 to support initiatives aimed at the development of promising technologies that solve complex ocean health issues and, in most cases, have strong commercialization potential.

This grant cycle’s recipients and projects include the following:

  • CREMA/SafetyNet Technologies: A pilot project to adapt lighting technology for use by gillnet fishers to limit bycatch in Costa Rica
  • Induced Polarization Team: A potential new way to detect and categorize contaminants in the ocean using sensor cables
  • Oceanic Laboratories: Creation of mass-deployable tools such as a nutrient sensor for ocean monitoring, conservation and industry
  • Oceanswell: Microgrants for community-level marine conservation projects in Sri Lanka, and emergency response to toxic waste from the Xpress Pearl oil spill.
  • Ocean Visions: A multidisciplinary, multi-sector approach to develop technology road maps that accelerate development of ocean-based carbon dioxide reduction strategies
  • ORCA: Passive Underwater Pollution Sensors (PUPS) that can be deployed at very low cost by community scientists to track coastal nutrient pollution sources
  • Plant A Million Corals: Restoration of corals using microfragmentation to accelerate growth of and genetic research on coral resilience
  • Purple Mai’a Foundation: Support for the Purple Prize, an innovation competition focused on building technology solutions rooted in Native Hawaiian values, startup incubator
  • Save the Waves: Partnerships with coastal communities to mobilize local protection of the ecosystem from pollution, poorly planned development and other threats
  • Seatrec/University of New Hampshire: Development of a seafloor mapping glider that uses Seatrec’s method to harvest renewable energy using seawater column temperature gradients
  • Stone Aerospace/Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum: “Sunfish,” an autonomous mapping robotic system geared towards exploration in extreme environments
  • Stop Microwaste!/The Great Bubble Barrier: A bubble-based method to prevent litter from traveling down tributaries into the ocean, without affecting fish migration or ship traffic
  • University of Haifa – Derya Akkaynak: SeaThru, an underwater camera that uses a physics-based algorithm to “remove” water from underwater digital imagery
  • Wingtrawl: Funding to deploy fuel-saving, bycatch reducing wing trawling systems to shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico
  • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution – Anna Michel: Development of a small, lower cost portable gas and pollutant sensor

SMTP is actively supporting 38 projects that use technology to enable ocean research, promote habitat health, eliminate ocean pollution and increase the sustainability of fisheries.

Schmidt Marine Technology Partners is part of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Network that includes The Schmidt Family Foundation, Schmidt Futures, The 11th Hour Project,  Schmidt Ocean Institute, 11th Hour Racing  and Remain Nantucket.