Southern New England has a cluster of oceanographic expertise, and helping new companies take advantage of that is the Ocean Technology Center at the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus. As one of the state’s Centers of Excellence, the Ocean Technology Center serves as business incubator, giving companies a chance to get their start without high overhead costs. They also have access to the faculty and students of the URI Graduate School of Oceanography.
Two companies now emerging because of the center and the university’s help are Jamestown’s SubChem Systems Inc., which produces submersible chemical analyzers, and Narragansett’s Pyrcon, a research and development firm that designs sonar systems that make navigating the ocean possible.
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In developing SubChem Systems, President Alfred K. Hanson Jr. hopes to tap into a national movement to coordinate the work of ocean monitors around the country to form a national ocean monitoring system. By unifying the databases of information, scientists will be able to see how water quality has changed over time. It will also help researchers who want to study long-term global changes.
Hanson develops products that allow scientists to measure accurately nutrient and chemical levels in water. For example, he has developed a prototype for a product he calls the SubChem Analyzer, which can be towed behind a boat in an estuary, bay, river, or stream. While it’s underwater, the analyzer measures the levels of nutrients and chemicals in the water in real time – meaning that scientists get the results as soon as they are recorded.
This feature is critical, Hanson said. The problem with measuring nutrient levels by taking water samples is that many nutrients diminish before they reach the laboratory. The SubChem Analyzer allows researchers to make several measurements in a short time, allowing for a detailed characterization of the water they are sampling he said.
“You avoid the complications of sample storage – the nutrients can change,” Hanson said. “Some of the things that you measure are only in the water very temporarily. By the time you bring the bottle up, they’re gone.”
The analyzer allows researchers to see the chemical and nutrient profile of the water column, the concentration of the chemicals and nutrients at different water levels. And the product’s optical components make it possible to detect low levels of nutrients that affect the biological process of their environment.
This is especially valuable when researchers are looking for traces of metals that can be toxic, he said.
Hanson said he got the idea for his product while he was a researcher at URI. The U.S. Navy provided him with funds to investigate whether the concentrations of chemicals in the ocean would vary at different centimeter scales. That is, whether they would differ at different depths.
The instrument he developed that allowed him to make those measurements worked so well that he decided to approach the Ocean Technology Center and compete for funds to turn it into a commercial product. His work with the Navy made him realize that his development had commercial potential, he said.
“I recognized that there were other applications for this technology,” Hanson said. “There was a real need for a system that could measure nutrients in real time.”
It’s needed as ocean monitors from California to Narragansett Bay are busy gathering data on water quality. Now, their work is being pulled under a larger umbrella. The National Ocean Partnership Program, a federal agency, is providing funding for these kinds of projects. For example, the URI Graduate School of Oceanography recently received a $2.9 million grant from the partnership to test new technology for sampling coastal waters. About $600,000 of that money went to SubChem Systems.
Hanson, who works out of the incubator space provided him at the Narragansett Bay campus, is now working with a part-time electrical engineer and some students who are helping out. He plans to hire more people as he takes on new projects. One of his challenges, however, is making the SubChem Analyzer so easy to use that even someone who is not a chemist will be able to operate it.
“The biggest challenge (is) to make it so that it’s simple to operate, because it’s a very complex technology,” he said. “To be a really viable commercial instrument, that’s what’s needed for chemical analyzers.”
Nonetheless, Hanson sees a growing market for his product, especially given that researchers today do not have the technology to measure many of the ocean’s components.
“Most of the chemicals in the sea, both the ones (present) naturally and man-introduced, we do not have methods that (allow us to) measure them in the water,” he said, “and this clearly has limited our ability to monitor their distributions and understand their impacts on the marine environment.”
Pyrcon is in the business of helping companies that need to navigate the ocean floor with remotely operated vehicles avoid obstacles in their environment. Jim Miller, a URI ocean engineering professor and Tom Weber, a URI ocean engineering graduate student, have for the past two years been developing their research and development firm at the Ocean Technology Center incubator space. And now that they’ve built up their business, the two are looking to move out of the incubator and into a permanent office in the Narragansett area. They’re searching for a 1,500 square foot space.
Miller and Weber, who are business partners, said they originally thought their business would involve manufacturing sonar products. But then they researched the cost of venturing into the manufacturing arena, and realized that their expertise as engineers lies not with manufacturing and marketing, but designing and creating. They decided to stick with what they do best.
“We were going to design something and build it and sell it,” Miller recalled. “R&D is the cream for an engineer; when you’re coming up with something from a hand (drawing), that’s an engineer’s dream.”
Many companies find it more efficient to contract out their research and development work. But since finding R&D people in the sonar industry can be difficult, there is a niche that Weber and Miller believe they can fill. Specifically, the two take an ancient technology and apply it to fit the specific needs of their clients. Those who work underwater use two kinds of sonar. Active sonar is the process of sending out sound waves underwater and detecting their reflections off the objects they strike; passive sonar is the process of listening for the sounds that objects make as they move through water.
One of the first uses of sonar was developed shortly after the sinking of the Titanic, when researchers developed a way to use it to avoid icebergs. Sonar was also used in World War I.
Today, oil companies, researchers, and ocean survey companies that need to work under the sea use sonar devices to prevent mishaps from ruining their missions.
For example, the U.S. Navy uses sonar to, among other things, test to make sure that its operations in a given area will not disturb nearby whales and other aquatic life.
Companies that sell these sonar devices must make the decision to either buy such a product or build it themselves. If they buy it, their margins will be low, but so will the risk that the product will fail. If they build it themselves, the risk of failure is higher. But if they succeed, their profits will also be higher.
Weber and Miller help them make that decision. Typically, a company will approach them with an idea, and the two will conduct a feasibility study to determine whether it is possible to develop the proposed product, as well as how much it will cost. A typical feasibility study might last a month, while the design can take about one year.
Weber and Miller say they now have enough work to keep them going for at least another year. But given that they are operating in a Southern New England area that is a hotbed for oceanographic studies and industry, they believe they will have business for much longer than that.
“There’s a real market for high-tech underwater instrumentation design,” Miller said. “We’re in the middle of a lot of stuff happening. It’s exciting.”
