Jennifer Bushman sees oysters as a “phenomenal” opportunity to help engage investors in the blue economy.

Bushman is the co-founder and executive director of Fed by Blue, which aims to bolster support for a responsible blue food system. She said it’s key not to silo the blue economy but instead to help the public and potential investors understand how it fits into the larger food system.

“We can talk about the water farmer in a way that really relates to how people relate to their food system, which is primarily land-based,” Bushman said on Tuesday. “We’ve got to align with land and sea.”

Bushman was one of four panelists at the 2025 Ocean Innovation Conference on Tuesday who offered insights on building a blue economy. The one-day event is organized by the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and the Alliance for the Blue Economy. It was first held in 2023.

The conference aims to bring together a range of stakeholders from different fields and backgrounds, "all with a shared passion for the ocean," Lydia Thomas, program manager at CIE, told the Business Journal last week.

Others on the Building the Blue panel included Thomas; Jerry Cronin, executive director at OpenSeas, a blue technology innovation hub at Old Dominion University; and Natalie Guess, the assistant director of innovation and impact at The University of Southern Mississippi. Diane Durance, the executive director at the Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship at James Madison University, moderated the panel.

Both Cronin and Guess said that while blue economy investment is starting to make its way into their states, the funding system isn’t as robust as what exists in parts of North Carolina or in the Boston area. 

“That’s starting to happen,” Cronin said about funding. “Where we are, it’s sort of a team sport.”

Guess said their biggest support comes from the federal government’s presence on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She said past companies that have gone through the university’s incubator program have seen federal investment.

Local institutions and universities play a key role in supporting the blue economy and its businesses.
 
“For us, it’s workforce development, for sure,” Guess said about the university’s role. “So we're building these students (to go) into the roles of the type of companies that we're bringing in.”

Thomas said CIE has an “entire suite” of programs to support all entrepreneurs, including those in the blue economy space. That includes CIE’s Idea Test Lab, an early-stage, preaccelerator program that’s focused on “helping create strong founders in the very beginning,” Thomas said. CIE runs an Idea Test Lab specifically for blue economy entrepreneurs and also offers a mentor program for all founders.

When it comes to investing in blue economy startups, Bushman said her biggest concern is around the expectations of investors when they invest funds in the blue economy. 

“That model of three to five years, money-in-money-out expectation, just is not the kind of patient money, impact money that we’re looking for,” she said. “This is really a 10-year, 15-year play, and we need that patience in order to start to build out some of these ideas.”

However, Bushman said she’s excited about seeing companies that previously invested in plant-based or cell-based products, looking at investments in the blue economy. Her group has also found ways to promote blue economy issues through media, including a docuseries that aired on PBS and a forthcoming cookbook.

Ahead of the panel, Deborah Westphal kicked off the conference as the morning keynote speaker. Westphal, whose career spanned 30 years and included government agencies and Fortune 100 companies, reminded the event attendees of the impacts each decision can have.

“Some decisions feel monumental. Some of those decisions feel mundane,” she said. “But if there's one thing that history teaches us, it's that decisions rarely exist in isolation. Each decision ripples, they layer, they intersect in unpredictable ways.”

Westphal encouraged local business and government leaders not to make decisions based on short-term economic gain while risking longer-term environmental damage. She pointed to the proposed harbor deepening and the once-considered rezoning of Point Peter on the western bank of the Cape Fear River as measures that have prompted “heightened concerns.”

“Wilmington stands at a crossroads,” Westphal said. “One path is further expansion, more dredging, more pavement, more density in low-lying areas. On the other lies a different model, adaptive, resilient growth.”

She said it will be important for leaders from different parts of the community to share their perspectives and insights and not to become siloed from one another. 

Other events on Tuesday’s conference program included a panel of founders talking about navigating the future in bluetech, a panel discussing local solutions for a resilient coastal North Carolina and keynote speaker and world champion surfer Shaun Tomson.