Students at Deep Bay Marine Station

Vancouver IslandUniversity

Centre for
SEAFOOD
INNOVATION

Seafood Innovation

Welcome to the Centre for Seafood Innovation

The Centre for Seafood Innovation (CSI), is a three year innovation hub to help BC seafood companies extract more value from sustainable harvests. 

During this time, CSI has catalyzed innovation among seafood entrepreneurs while providing valuable experiential learning to students.

All of the successful initiatives that CSI launched will continue past March 2024, championed by industry, First Nations and VIU’s Department of Science and Technology.

To do this, CSI:

  • Partners with industry, faculty and students to undertake relevant projects to address seafood sector needs.
  • Networks with BC seafood entrepreneurs to understand the challenges facing the industry.
  • Joins forces with researchers and seafood producers to deliver impactful public education events.
  • Focuses on workforce development for the BC seafood industry.

Our goal is to create new opportunities for BC seafood businesses.

Announcing CSI's Seafood Business Accelerator (SBA) 

The SBA is a BC-based program to help local small-scale fishers and farmers develop more sustainable, profitable seafood businesses. The program provides food industry training, coaching, business advice and implementation services.

How We Can Help

CSI supports the seafood sector with applied research, business development, public education, and workforce attraction projects to foster ongoing innovation.

Located at VIU's Deep Bay Marine Field Station in Bowser, CSI also offers a shared-use commercial kitchen and classroom/event/meeting spaces.

Collaboration is key. We partner with companies, associations, researchers, students, and funders to deliver on our mandate. For example, we’re working with the BC Commercial Fishing Caucus to establish a seafood business accelerator.

We work directly with industry. We partnered with HPP Canada and VIU Culinary to create new recipes using oysters shucked with high-pressure processing. The resulting (mouthwatering) Oyster Challenge dishes were a highlight at CSI’s Grand Opening in November 2021.


Who We Help

Industry

CSI supports the seafood sector with business development, applied research, public education, and workforce attraction projects to foster ongoing innovation.

If you need help capturing an opportunity or solving a problem CSI can help. As part of the VIU ecosystem, and with extensive food industry contacts, we link industry with researchers to undertake relevant projects. We can also help with sourcing funding for your project.

CSI also offers commercial kitchen, classroom, and event space rentals in our beautiful facility in Bowser, BC.

Students & Faculty

If you're an undergraduate/graduate student or faculty, and you eat, we’re interested in talking to you!

At CSI we help seafood companies capture seafood opportunities with applied research, public education, and workforce attraction projects. We love working with students and instructors to provide practical learning opportunities while discovering more about that all-important factor in our lives: food.

Food Processors

Located at Vancouver Island University's Deep Bay Marine Field Station in Bowser, CSI offers a shared-used commercial kitchen and classroom/event/meeting spaces.

Our provincially inspected commercial-grade kitchen is available to rent on a daily, weekly, or longer-term basis.

Group of people inside Deep Bay Marine Centre

Ongoing Projects

Want to see what kind of projects we get involved with? Have a project idea and need help? Check out our ongoing projects or contact us to discuss. Ongoing Projects

What We've Done

Since opening in November 2021, the Centre for Seafood Innovation team has been constantly on the move, delivering projects and events to attract and help seafoodpreneurs. Past Projects

Ask us about your project

Contact Us

Take a Virtual Tour

CSI was announced in March 2021. Take a tour and check out our facility and learn about our services.

Events

Keep up with events in the industry.

Testimonials

"Working with CSI is fantastic! They provide a service that is truly unique to VIU! The CSI develops innovative ways to provide students with unique and fun real-world learning opportunities. Better yet, they help with the details: from funding proposals to organizing food industry field trips and public events!" Dr. Andrew Loudon, Professor, Biology, Vancouver Island University


"The Centre for Seafood Innovation is helping Walcan innovate. They are supporting our efforts to develop value added products to increase recovery, profitability and sustainability. They were also instrumental in connecting us to a Royal Roads MBA project which provided us with strategic market information and is steering our E-Commerce and D2C distribution expansions." Cameron Pirie, President, Walcan Seafood

Contribute to CSI

The Centre for Seafood Innovation (CSI) is dedicated to supporting sustainable seafood production and strengthening food security in BC.

Thank you for your support that benefits VIU students and local communities – and that makes seafood more accessible to consumers in BC.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.