B.C. firm’s remote watercraft taking care of ‘the dangerous and the boring’ – Vernon Morning Star
January 5, 2026
Autonomous boats built in downtown Nanaimo are creating ripples across the marine technology sector.
Shift Coastal Technologies is the brainchild of biologist-turned-entrepreneur James Spencer, who saw a need for marine vehicles that could get into dangerous shorelines that would be risky for crewed boats.
Prior to developing autonomous vehicles, Spencer worked as a consultant with the mining industry and First Nations.
But when he found working in the corporate environment “stifling,” he opted to “pull the ‘chute” and applied for an Innovations Solutions Canada grant that could help him design a boat that could be used to clean up plastic debris arriving on the B.C. coast that drifted across the Pacific Ocean after an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011.
