MITRE Collaborates with Sofar Ocean to Develop New Bristlemouth Connectivity Standard for Marine Technology

McLean, Va., & Bedford, Mass., March 13, 2025 – MITRE and Sofar Ocean are accelerating the development of Bristlemouth, a new connectivity standard for marine technology. Bristlemouth provides a modern hardware interface protocol and ocean-proof connector to support peer-to-peer network interoperability and unlock system integration for ocean sensing and exploration at an unprecedented scale.

"To accelerate ocean and maritime technology, we need to eliminate needless burdens and barriers," said Nicholas Rotker, MITRE's chief bluetech strategist. "A connectivity standard for ocean technology will enable new entrants to reduce the time it takes to get innovative hardware from the lab bench to the ocean."

Proprietary hardware interface protocols and complex connections have slowed innovation and product development and have made it difficult to integrate marine technology at scale. The Bristlemouth standard removes these barriers and empowers the public and private sectors to collaborate on bringing new interoperable solutions to market more quickly.

To rapidly expand adoption of Bristlemouth, MITRE will fully enable its BlueTech Lab in Massachusetts with the standard, creating the world's first Bristlemouth center of excellence. The lab will serve as a testbed for Bristlemouth developers to accelerate marine technology solutions.

"Scaling ocean data and exploration is extraordinarily hard—it should not be," said Tim Janssen, co-founder and CEO of Sofar Ocean. "Bristlemouth is the foundational technology to remove the largest hurdle to unlocking ocean information at scale. Our partnership with MITRE is an important catalyst to accelerate the impact of this critical open standard."

Bristlemouth is funded by Sofar Ocean, MITRE, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Oceankind, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Ocean Discovery League, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, Builders Vision, Dalio Philanthropies, and Aqualink.

About MITRE

MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to driving solutions to our nation's most pressing challenges. As a not-for-profit research and development organization, MITRE’s staff leverage our unique multi-sponsor vantage point, systems expertise, and innovative solutions to ensure the health, prosperity, and security of our nation. Learn more at mitre.org.

About Sofar Ocean

Sofar Ocean is the global leader in marine weather intelligence. We deliver the most accurate marine weather, powered by the world’s largest network of real-time ocean sensors, to improve safety and efficiency at sea. Learn more at sofarocean.com.

Media Contact: Jordan Graham, media@mitre.org