MARINE INSTRUMENTS SA

Their core work

Marine Instruments is a Spanish marine technology company that builds operational tools for the fishing and aquaculture industry, translating satellite earth observation data into practical day-to-day solutions for vessel operators and fishery managers. Their core capability is turning Copernicus satellite products into actionable intelligence — optimizing fishing routes, monitoring water quality, and reducing fuel consumption and emissions for commercial fishing fleets. They bridge the gap between raw earth observation data and working software that fishing industry professionals can use at sea. Their work spans both wild capture fisheries and bivalve mariculture, with a growing emphasis on machine learning and big data methods to improve fleet efficiency and environmental sustainability.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Marine Instruments entered H2020 as a participant in FORCOAST (2019), focused on translating Copernicus data into coastal information services for mariculture and wild fisheries — essentially proving that satellite products could serve these industries. By 2020 they had advanced enough to lead SUSTUNTECH as coordinator, shifting the problem framing from ecosystem monitoring toward operational fleet efficiency: fuel consumption, emission reduction, and route optimization. The trajectory is clear — from passive data consumption and end-user engagement toward building AI-enhanced operational products that sit inside fishing vessel workflows.

Marine Instruments is moving up the value chain — from demonstrating that Copernicus data is useful for fisheries, toward building proprietary ML-driven decision tools that optimize fishing operations in real time, suggesting future work will be increasingly software-product oriented rather than research-demonstration focused.

How they like to work

Marine Instruments has taken on the coordinator role in their most recent and largest project, indicating they are capable of leading consortia and not just following. With 26 unique partners across just 2 projects, they work in medium-to-large collaborative structures typical of Innovation Actions. Their participation in both a coastal ecosystem project and a deep-sea tuna fishery project suggests they seek diverse technical partnerships rather than working with a fixed group of recurring collaborators.

Marine Instruments has built a network of 26 unique partners spanning 12 countries through only 2 projects — an unusually broad network for their project count, reflecting the wide geographic scope of European fisheries and Copernicus applications. Their collaboration footprint suggests Atlantic and Mediterranean partners are likely represented, consistent with tuna and bivalve mariculture focus areas.

What sets them apart

Marine Instruments occupies a rare operational niche: they are a private company (not a university or research institute) that converts satellite earth observation into fishing industry tools, combining domain expertise in fisheries with Copernicus data integration and machine learning. Unlike academic partners who study fisheries from a distance, Marine Instruments builds solutions that fishing operators actually use, giving them credibility with both the industry end-users and the EO research community. For consortium builders, they bring the critical link between scientific outputs and commercial market adoption in the blue economy sector.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SUSTUNTECH
  Marine Instruments led this project as coordinator — their largest funding award (€476K) — applying machine learning and Copernicus data specifically to tuna fleet emissions and fuel efficiency, a commercially high-stakes application for the global fishing industry.
• FORCOAST
  Their entry into H2020 as a participant, covering the full coastal value chain from oysterground restoration to wild fisheries water quality — demonstrating breadth across both capture fisheries and aquaculture before they pivoted to leading their own project.