Technology that takes the trouble out of working at sea.

Our co-representative, Michio Imai, was working to connect people with disabilities with jobs in farming and fishing when a visit to a Hiroshima oyster farm showed oysters buried under barnacles. Oyster farmers told us that about 40% of the oysters that barnacles settle on die, and as many as 90% in some places. At the time, there was nothing to be done about it. In 2020, the “Shido Next Innovator” program run by METI and JETRO brought Imai together with Hayato Chishaki and Masahiko Mori, and the three began looking for a way to stop marine life settling in the first place rather than scraping it off afterwards. The answer turned out to be the surface-treatment technology of Kensuke Kuroda (Representative, Nagoya Surface Technology; Specially Appointed Professor, Institute of Innovation for Future Society, Nagoya University).