Perth startup Harvest to stream 24-7 from sea floor

ASX-listed and Perth-headquartered Harvest Technology Group has developed a tailored solution for an oil and gas exploration company, enabling access to real-time data from the sea floor.

The system uses acoustic transfer technology to securely transmit data around the clock from a monitoring structure on the sea floor up to a smart buoy at the surface.

The smart buoy acts as a modem to communicate data back onshore via mobile or satellite link – at a fraction of the bandwidth typically required, alleviating the challenge of relying on retrospective data to make critical operational decisions.

“Harvest’s Nodestream protocol allows customers to receive a live video feed of their subsea assets from anywhere via any mobile device with Internet access,” the company's head of solution architecture Jimmy Dean said.

"Another important feature is the ability to alert onshore headquarters when there is a major change in sensor readings, so customers can respond quickly in emergencies or monitor until intervention is required,” Dean added.

Harvest said that this technology is self-powered, meaning its able to operate for several years without the need for in-person inspection and maintenance.

This limits human risk in unsafe environments underwater, reduces carbon emissions and eliminates the high costs associated with traditional subsea monitoring.

“Leading operators are adopting technology to gain a competitive edge,” Harvest product design and delivery lead Jason King said.

“Shipping, ports, oil and gas exploration, renewable energy, offshore wind farms, aquaculture, and environmental researchers know you need the best data to help make decisions, and the best data isn’t yesterday’s data, it’s live-streamed data,” King added.

Harvest's research and development is conducted in-house by 20 developers.

In 2022, Harvest invested almost $5 million in research and development, plus $1 million to build its innovation hub in Perth’s Technology Park.