There’s a sector that turns fish waste into materials for CO₂ capture, that uses marine microorganisms to develop new pharmaceuticals, that studies algae as a sustainable alternative to land-based raw materials. A sector that, globally, is expected to be worth hundreds of billions of euros by the end of this decade and that, in Europe, has its own strategies, dedicated funding, and an active scientific community.

And yet, despite all of this, most people have never heard of it.

It’s called the blue bioeconomy. And its biggest challenge isn’t scientific: it’s visibility.

The problem isn’t the content

There’s no shortage of results. No shortage of projects, publications, patents, or success stories. What’s missing is the translation: the ability to take that knowledge from the lab into everyday conversation. To make it reach people who will never read a scientific paper.

So the gap isn’t in the quality of the science. It’s in the language with which it’s shared or isn’t.

Not every hero is photogenic

We live in an era where attention is the scarcest resource, where an image has a fraction of a second to stop a scroll. The blue bioeconomy doesn’t play this game easily: its protagonists are microalgae, marine sponges, microorganisms living on the ocean floor. They don’t have the immediate visual appeal of a whale, nor the emotional weight of a disappearing coral reef.

That doesn’t make them any less relevant: it makes them harder to communicate. And that difficulty, when not actively addressed, turns into invisibility.

Silence has a cost

When the gap between science and the public widens, something dangerous takes hold: the idea that science is exclusive territory for scientists and researchers. A closed world, with its own logic, that has nothing to do with anyone else’s life.

The consequence isn’t just a lack of awareness. It’s distrust. When people don’t understand what’s being done, why, or for whom, they become receptive to narratives that distort or oversimplify. Communicative silence isn’t neutral, it generates uncertainty, and uncertainty delays the social acceptance of solutions the world urgently needs.

The case of Portugal

Portugal has an Exclusive Economic Zone of over 1.7 million km², the third largest in the European Union. On paper, an enviable position. In practice, a promise not yet fully delivered.

As Patrícia Gonçalves, Communications and Marketing Coordinator at B2E CoLAB, recently argued on this site, the problem isn’t a lack of science or technology: it’s the inability to translate that potential into economic value recognized by the market. Companies outside the sector look at the ocean and see complexity, risk, and uncertain returns. Capital hesitates where clear business models and structured data are missing.

But there’s a step that comes even before that misalignment. A market doesn’t recognize value in what society doesn’t know. Without blue literacy, there’s no demand, no informed decision-makers are formed, and there’s no pressure for the sector to be treated as a priority. Public visibility isn’t cosmetic — it’s the condition for everything else to happen.

Portugal’s problem with the ocean, then, begins before investment. It begins with the conversation that hasn’t happened yet.

Responsibility is shared

The blue bioeconomy won’t reach the dinner table on its own. It won’t get there just because the results are good, or because European funding exists, or because policies move forward. It will get there when scientists, companies, institutions, and communicators invest as much in the message as in the research — when outreach is treated as part of the job, not as an extra.

Making an idea visible is no less rigorous than producing it. Often, it’s what decides whether it gets anywhere at all.