A diagram on the Katchi Technologies Facebook page illustrating how the SmartNet works. Facebook - ContributedYARMOUTH, N.S. — Yarmouth-based Katchi Technologies Inc. – a $50,000 prize winner in the 2022 Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge in the Climate Impact and Regeneration category – continues to set its sights on making a change.
“I said it was a really good idea. Let’s go for it," says Greene." started going to competitions. Ignite Lab helped us out. There’s not a big innovation culture in Yarmouth but we found ours at Ignite Lab." “We got in with the right people who were specialized in what we were trying to do and it took off from there. It was just Mark and I for the first year-and-a-half telling our story over and over again about how it would benefit the ocean, reduce fuel, increase safety and that it could be done,” she says. “A lot of people didn’t believe us that it could be done. It’s a simple concept to see, but a hard engineering feat.
“The hydrodynamic blocks did open the net up just as much as traditional trawl doors do,” says d’Entremont. “With our system, also, we found out we can reduce fuel consumption by 30 percent… it’s cheaper to operate, no contact with the seabed, it’s cheaper to maintain, contact with the seabed also destroys your own gear.”