Bedrock turns 1 today — 2020 in review

While there was immeasurable turbulence to the year, I do have a lot to be thankful for looking back at the past 365 days. In an effort to take a hopeful and optimistic approach to life, this is going to be a piece largely about the good that came out of that hellish blip in time. Because there are diamonds in the rough.

It’s been an emotionally charged first week of 2021, and today, Bedrock legally turns 1. A year ago we incorporated. Five days later on Jan 13, 2020, Charlie and I published the manifesto of what we believed the world needed and what we wanted to build for the world:

Introducing Bedrock Ocean Exploration

Since then a lot has happened. The world has changed yet again. I wanted to take a second to recap some of what we saw that wasn’t front and center but were profound for us (and me).

Macro Scale

To start us off we saw amazing things happen globally that are all net positives for the world and also can directly affect the growth of the markets Bedrock is going after:

• The New Energy Supermajors are now Renewables-based. Not oil.
  The largest energy companies in the world are shifting focus to renewables as their valuations were/are surpassed by renewable energy companies like Ørsted. It appears the future to them seems quite clear — and they’re backing that up with their investments.
  Bloomberg did a great job summarizing this:

This is one of those general net positives that isn’t getting as much attention but is an enormous turning point for us all who live on Earth.

• Demand for Offshore Wind and Ocean Renewable exploded in the US this year:

Forbes Link

All that target growth added in 2019 shown in the above chart, resulting in solicitations for offshore wind energy from those states in 2020 which sparked lease purchasing frenzies offshore that we’ve never experienced before. See this summary for a state-by-state assessment of the growth.

Offshore wind is a critical renewable supplement to dense metropolitan areas where massive amounts of energy need to be generated “close by” for efficient transmission and distribution. Oftentimes it’s more cost-effective in these cases to build large offshore wind farms. This isn’t going anywhere and will only continue to grow. Many don’t know but:

The United States has a vast offshore wind energy resource with a technical potential of more than 2,000 gigawatts (GW), or nearly double the nation’s current electricity use. — AWEA

• Power-to-X has taken a firm hold in the narratives surrounding offshore wind energy. Since the wind blows fairly consistently in the ocean, wind farms are generating power almost constantly. Grid demand for energy comes in sinusoidal peaks and valleys, and energy must either be used, stored, or dumped. These offshore wind farms are so large, that the excess power they can generate (replace aging coal plants), that the excess power should be used to create other needed fuels like hydrogen production as a way to storage that generated power. Hence — Power-to-X.
• Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) planning & mapping begun this year
  Energy Intelligence Link. This is an ENORMOUS budding market to keep an eye on. Again, it’s one of those problems we’re going to have to solve in the next 10 years. How and who is going to do it best are still up for debate.
• The United States released its National Strategy For Mapping, Exploring, and Characterizing The United States Exclusive Economic Zone. Seen here. This is the first time the united states has officially created an initiative to fully explore our own coastal ocean territory. It still surprises me that this hasn’t been done yet.
• The United States’s Biden’s win + a Dem Congress (now official) is going to further accelerate all the above from 2021 and beyond.

It’s even harder to be a great long-term thinker when you’re living in short-term turmoil. However, this was an enormous tipping-point-year for shifting the world’s reliance on oil. The Ocean is a critical part of this and all commercial activity, including assessment, planning, engineering, construction, operation, and maintenance of this new infrastructure requires Marine Surveys. Shameless Bedrock plug made.

Business

Charlie and I started 2020 with a belief that the world was going to need a new, technology-centric approach if humans were going to successfully map and explore our oceans at a planetary scale. So Bedrock Ocean Exploration was incorporated on Jan 8, 2020.

So much of what I’m so proud of we can’t share publically yet. There will be a time to tell the story in full. But it’s unfortunately not now.

The year can be summed up by these 2 images, teasing what’s to come this year:

Hydrographic and Geophysical Survey Services — powered by our T.R.I.P.n. class AUV. Much more to share about what’s came together to make this possible.

Mosaic™ — Work with, access, and archive your seafloor data all in the cloud.

Oh, so much more to come. Stay tuned.
Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook to see the story unfold.

2020 Highlights

• We shipped something. And I can’t say anything else about it.
  Charlie + the team are animals.

• We built an insane team, and I got to work alongside some of the smartest, most-thoughtful, inspiring, and kind humans I’ve had the pleasure of ever coming across. They’re amazing. There’s many more of us, but here’s a highlight I can share from our Christmas Party:

• Built a world-class brand to represent the initiative the world need’s for ocean exploration. We’re trying to give people a symbol of some hope in a time when it’s been really hard to find it. Props and thanks to Sebastian + Herbst for all the dedication and help on this.

Bedrock Ocean Exploration

• COVID made things challenging. But it did not slow us down. What we accomplished during this time with limited resources, access, and people was quite astonishing to watch. Can’t wait to see what it’s like when we can all get together for the first time.

Personal

• The business was all-consuming as it should be in the early days. Given the pandemic, that was actually ok, and I feel insanely blessed. The below was Charlie and I just post-celebratory tequila shots the night before we incorporated on Jan 7, 2020 at Albatross Pub in Berkeley:

• I am a people person. Not being able to interact with humans on a real, physical, in-person level has been extremely difficult for me. Giving me a true taste of what makes me happy, and what I get energy from.
• I slowed down. I became more aware. I lost my mind a few times. And I feel I understand myself even more now.
• Will never forget the hectic, almost immediate life-shift that occurred, running away from NYC while it was shutting down in March. To the people I got to share that moment with, thank you for being there:

• Proud of the recognition from Forbes. It’s been a crazy windy, non-linear, or predictable route that got me here.

Ocean discoveries

This is not an exhaustive list, but some of the highlights easily highlighting still, how little we know even about “explored” areas.

• A coral reef the height of the Empire State Building was found within the great barrier reef. No one had effectively mapped it with high-resolution sonar. It didn’t come up in satellite-derived bathymetry. It was expected to be flat. See Schmidt Ocean Institue for more.

• There was a new “longest animal ever recorded” found at an estimated whopping 150ft (46 meters) long. It’s called siphonophore Apolemia.

Conclusion

Thankfully the world is stochastic. So a year exactly like 2020 is absurdly unlikely to occur again.

I can also say with certainty that the foundational team, work, partnerships, interest, and excitement stirring are setting Bedrock up to have a special 2021.

Sharing lots of optimism, love, and hope for the future of this planet.
To the depths and beyond.