Press kit

Project SeaSense is a Dutch non-profit turning sailboats into a coastal ocean observing network. A small on-board node reads the instruments a boat already carries and adds air-pressure and motion sensors. Project SeaSense is an endorsed Decade Project of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030).

Coastal seas change fast, and we measure them far too rarely: fixed stations measure one spot, research ships are scarce, and satellites struggle near the shore. Meanwhile thousands of sailboats cross these waters every year, already carrying instruments for wind, depth and water temperature. Project SeaSense, a Dutch non-profit foundation (ANBI) based in Amsterdam, collects that data and adds what science needs: a small node that plugs into the boat's instrument network, plus an optional water-quality module. In summer 2026 the system sailed from the Netherlands to Stockholm and back aboard a new Contest 63CS. The results are in a paper for IEEE MetroSea 2026, co-authored with researchers from The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) and TNO. Next is Blauwe Long 2027: about 50 boats measuring one season on Dutch waters. Project SeaSense is an endorsed Decade Project of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030).