Rock Solid

The maritime industry in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) is unique—versatile, adaptable, collaborative and community-focused. This is not only due to the North Atlantic’s proximity, providing some of the most challenging and harsh ocean conditions, but also to centuries of sea living by determined and innovative people who created spaces that encourage synergy and minimize barriers. As a result, the province is home to state-of-the-art facilities supporting research, simulation and training, and innovation. Together, they are the spaces and places that help NL maritime science and technology evolve and thrive.

Atop the Rock

Known colloquially as The Rock, NL has rugged geology and sticks out into the North Atlantic, which offers dynamic and unpredictable weather system thanks to the Gulf Stream and the Labrador current colliding offshore. Water depths range from 80 to more than 3,800 meters at the infamous Titanic wreck. With a population of just over 500,000, NL has centuries of living by and depending on the sea, explained the Hon. Andrew Parsons, Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology. Fishery was the original backbone of the economy, although that has shifted to reflect the blue economy and a diverse array of maritime challenges.

The reason that NL developed a unique array of maritime expertise is simple: they had to.

“There were opportunities to grow it here because a lot of technology that was available—or not available—didn't reflect, or couldn't deal with [our unique] operational challenges, the reality of our conditions: this mixture of weather, ice, sea state and isolation, as well as the variability and quick change in the weather patterns here,” explained Chris Hearn, director of the Centre for Marine Simulation at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). “When you live in a harsh environment, you have limited resources and you’re isolated, you have to be really good at coming up with solutions and problem solving on demand,” added Meagan Kay-Fowlow, president of the Co. Innovation Centre. “You don’t have a choice.”

The provincial government, Hearn said, recognized the need for and benefit of innovation early on. “We are truly nimble, we are adaptive, and we want people to come here,” Parsons emphasized. “[We’re] surrounded by an amazing team of people that are interested and committed to economic development and opportunity. We're very proud of our responsiveness; it's very easy to sit down with decision makers in our province in order to get things done.”

MUN Grounds Provincial Research

MUN, located in the capital of St. John’s, serves as home base for NL’s maritime sector, providing academic programs, testing and research facilities, plus opportunities for collaboration. The Ocean Engineering Research Centre (OERC) in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science boasts state-of-the-art technology, influential partnerships and researchers asking crucial questions for marine activity.

Its oldest asset is a tow tank with a wavemaker that has been used for hydrodynamic studies into ships and offshore structures, explained David Molyneux, OERC’s director. The Structures Lab features large equipment that can test almost full-scale ship panels with ice. “There's a related piece, which instead of looking at crashing loads, we look at sliding loads where a piece of glacial ice comes into contact with the side of a ship and is pushed into the side, because that actually changes the maximum load,” he added. There’s always been a level of risk with going to sea to earn a living, but “in order to make that environment as safe as possible, [we have] a long history of research into ship safety and offshore structures.”

The Centre for Cold Oceans Resource Engineering (C-CORE) is one of the OERC’s partners, originating as a university offshoot with extensive ice research history, particularly in the oil and gas industry. The National Research Council (NRC) of Canada also has facilities in St. John’s, allowing students and professors to utilize its technologies for research.

Lately, OERC’s focus has been on the Artic and related environments, which are sensitive and carry a unique set of hazards. With anticipated shipping growth in the North, it’s crucial to ensure that seafarers have lifesaving knowledge and technical capacity. “In the naval architecture world,” Molyneux explained, “classification societies have been the go-to organization for certifying our ships and making sure that they meet the best standards.” As vessels enter new environments, classification societies must be ready to answer the question of returning safely. “We are used to icebreakers being strongly and heavily built, but with climate change, do they need so much reinforcement? [All that] extra weight could be cargo,” he pondered.

MUN is also home to The Launch, a cutting-edge living lab operated by the university’s Marine Institute. Located in Holyrood, a bay where the North Atlantic collides with the rugged coast, The Launch serves as the ideal setting for technology testing, training and ocean research in a safe, near-Arctic environment. “It's an amazing facility and community,” said Parsons. “It's bringing the world's harshest cold-ocean environment to the client. [They deal] with ocean tech through R&D, testing and demonstration—taking everything together and putting it to the test.”

Research focuses on ocean mapping, habitat delineation, forecasting, modelling, management, and operational decisions, while long-standing partnerships with industry, government agencies, and Indigenous communities offer a truly collaborative and inclusive environment. Facilities include an autonomous testbed, a subsea observatory, remote operations center and workshop, training and meeting spaces. The Launch offers a toolkit that provides shared access to an extensive range of autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) for training or marine applications and is home to NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic network (DIANA) and SmartAtlantic, the largest applied ocean-observatory system in Canada, and data provider to the Canadian Integrated Ocean Observation System (CIOOS).

Government Contributions

St. John’s is also home to the NRC’s Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering Research Centre, which specializes in understanding the safety and performance of systems and infrastructure in harsh aquatic environments. “We have the world’s largest ice tank,” proudly said David Murrin, General Director of the site. It measures 90 meters long with temperatures that range down to -25 °C that helps to stimulate Arctic conditions. It’s been used to study a variety of challenges, including navigation and model tests of ice structure interactions. “We also have a 200-meter towing tank that’s fast enough to test high speed vessels and evaluate the performance of various marine systems like bulk carriers and patrol vessels, icebreakers, and submarines,” he added.

In addition to physical modeling, the NRC provides numerical modeling and full-scale field testing to optimize ship design and offshore and coastal structures. “We're now at a point where we're looking to leverage these large data sets to train AI models to help with decision support technologies and make ships safer and more efficient,” said Murrin. There are gaps, of course, like ship operations in the most extreme conditions. “We identified an opportunity to leverage our decades of data sets, and most importantly, our rich network of academic and industry researchers to kind of solve this limitation and try to fill in these gaps.” The solution is a collaborative approach between MUN and Virtual Marine, a company that specializes in maritime training simulations.

Collaboration and innovation are not a singular experience for the NRC. “We're uniquely positioned in the intersection of industry, academia and government. Each year, our scientists, engineers and business experts work closely with thousands of Canadian firms tackling these important problems and bringing these technologies to market,” explained Murrin. “We're also a steward of very important and unique scientific facilities and equipment, and that really helps us align science and innovation.”

Oceans Advance Bridges Industry

Collaboration in the NL maritime industry is facilitated by organizations to connect and unify the industry. Oceans Advance, born out of the concept for an ocean technology cluster in NL, has a network of partners, collaborators and buyers across Canada and around the world. It leads national and international export trade initiatives and offers support to bring technology solutions to a global audience. “We facilitate collaboration through targeted events, and we advocate for support from our provincial and federal funding partners for our members,” noted Executive Director Shelly Petten.

Member companies benefit from the vast network of partners and collaborations, trade opportunities for export growth, and continuous improvement initiatives like sales training and direct access to funding. Moreover, anyone outside of the province can benefit from Oceans Advance as an associate member. “We routinely connect folks from outside NL with our local community players,” added Petten. “We have the most amazing infrastructure here for R&D in the ocean space, too.”

The group is looking forward to this fall’s ABCMI Business Conference in Vancouver, marketing the initiative as a gateway to the Asia market. “We are also supporting the Atlantic Canadian trade show space at Ocean Business in Southampton in April 2025—a major export activity for our NL companies,” said Petten.

CO. INNOVATION CENTRE

Co. Innovation Centre Removes Barriers

A new player in the NL maritime sector is the Co. Innovation Centre, a multi-sectoral space for established and growing companies to converge, collaborate and co-create. The facility was created to ameliorate silos between industries, missed partnerships, a lack of infrastructure or warehouse space for bigger projects and low visibility of new, local technologies. “And the companies had a really interesting desire that I haven't seen in other places, to collaborate,” explained Kay-Fowlow. “Businesses here want to work together and they didn't have a place to do that.” A group of core partners helped the Centre reach its current stage, including techNL, Energy NL, Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, Energy Research and Innovation Newfoundland and Labrador (ERINL), and Econext, she cited.

The total space is about 54,000 square feet, split into different sections. About 20,000 square feet is office and collaboration space, while another 20,000 is light-industrial space that provides businesses with the technology and equipment they need for prototyping and testing. “We’re trying to make sure we have a really unique combination based on the conversations we've been having around needs and removing the barriers to access for these businesses,” said Kay-Fowlow.

The rest of the facility houses a café, public space and meeting rooms. “And then we're also in the planning stage for—and this is my favorite piece right now—a large-scale demonstration showcase space in the light industrial area, giving businesses or industry the option to rotate through and set up unique exhibits, whether it's for upcoming installations or new projects.”

“People love to say you're going to collaborate, but that's something that you actually have to curate and work actively to create the conditions for success,” she added. “And so we're going to be focusing on that piece. So, are we full? Are we dynamic? Do we have the great mix of the businesses that are operating across the province? Are we representing a variety of industries?”

New Horizons

Common themes across the conversations above—climate change, green marine transportation, maritime cybersecurity, automation and autonomy, digitalization, and the growing use of AI. The Rock may not be alone in facing challenges in these opportunities, but Newfoundland and Labrador should be poised for success. “If it works here, it will work anywhere. So that's why you need to come to this province,” said Parsons. “The technology we use here can be adapted to anywhere else in the world. And this is just a little corner of the world that can supply some of the strategies and solutions that will help us on a global basis.”

“I heard a great quote one time about Newfoundland and Labrador,” Hearn added. “‘It has a landscape that makes you want to live up to it, but it doesn't provide you the resources to do it.’ We've had more than 500 years of living here. It’s in our DNA; it’s part of what we are.”