IFSC and ACATMAR sign technical cooperation agreement to get the Marina Escola off the ground
The Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFSC) and ACATMAR, the Brazilian Nautical Association, have signed the Technical Cooperation Agreement that gives institutional backing to the Marina Escola at the Florianópolis-Continente Campus. The document was signed electronically in September 2026 by the IFSC rector, Zízimo Moreira Filho, and ACATMAR's president, Leandro "Mané" Ferrari.
The goal is to support the implementation, development and consolidation of the Marina Escola as a permanent environment for professional training, applied research, outreach and innovation focused on the Sea Economy. The agreement runs for 60 months, or five years, with reviews scheduled at months 12, 24 and 36, and involves no transfer of funds between the institutions: each one carries out its activities with its own facilities, staff and resources.
What the Marina Escola is
Presented in 2025, the Marina Escola project brings together two vocations the Florianópolis-Continente Campus already has: boating and gastronomy. On one side, training in boat maintenance, operation and services. On the other, onboard hospitality and gastronomic experiences linked to nautical tourism, a field in which the campus is a reference.
The proposal includes a floating pier, berths for boats and laboratories, turning the campus waterfront, on the shore of the North Bay, into a classroom. The project moves in stages, with technical, economic and environmental feasibility studies, construction and academic design, internal and external approvals and fundraising.
What the agreement sets in motion
The agreement organizes the part that usually stays loose between school and market. It provides for the exchange of information and good practices on the sea economy, the identification and periodic updating of the nautical sector's training and qualification needs, and advisory analysis of the Marina Escola's courses and workshops regarding how well they match what the market actually needs.
It also provides for jointly held talks, workshops, seminars, events, technical visits, studies and research; closer ties with marinas, shipyards, boatbuilding and maintenance companies, nautical tourism operators, service providers and coastal governance bodies; and the search for internships, professional experience, innovation projects and new partnerships.
IFSC is responsible for coordinating the Marina Escola and for defining objectives, content, methodology, staff, certification and course delivery conditions, with its academic autonomy preserved. Technical follow-up on the IFSC side will be handled by professor Tiago Savi Mondo.
ACATMAR acts as the institutional link between the Marina Escola and the sector's companies, organizations, professionals and workers, mobilizing the industry for the activities, giving advisory input on how relevant the courses are, and facilitating, with the owners' authorization, access to marinas, shipyards, boats and other professional environments for educational and scientific purposes. The association's president, Mané Ferrari, was named as the point of contact.
Research and outreach talking to the sector
"Signing the technical cooperation agreement between IFSC and ACATMAR is another step towards strengthening the blue economy, joining research and outreach with the real demands and the growth of Santa Catarina's nautical sector," says Vinicius de Luca Filho, director general of the Florianópolis-Continente Campus.
For ACATMAR, the agreement tackles a bottleneck companies in the sector have been pointing to for years.
"There is a shortage of qualified people, that is the answer we hear from shipyards, marinas and service providers all along the coast. Santa Catarina accounts for about 70% of Brazil's production of sport and recreational boats, but anyone who hires knows the workforce has not grown at the same pace. The Marina Escola puts training inside a public institution of excellence, with the productive sector at the table from the start," says Mané Ferrari, president of ACATMAR.
"ACATMAR's role here is to be a two-way bridge: to take the real demand of companies into IFSC and to take students into the marina, the shipyard and the boat. No money changing hands, just work, network and presence. That is how a partnership lasts five years and turns into results," he adds.
Why this matters for the Sea Economy
Brazil has 266,839 motorboats, 160,992 personal watercraft and 17,935 sailboats registered with the Navy. It is a sport and recreational fleet spread along the entire coast, across the large lakes and the inland waterways, and it needs maintenance, storage, repair, operation and service all year round.
Serving that fleet is the work of 9,382 nautical companies operating in the country, and about seven in ten of them are service businesses. The chain goes far beyond the shipyard: it runs through engines, onboard electronics, composites, joinery, upholstery, painting, design, engineering, logistics, maintenance, marinas, retail and tourism. Every one of those links needs trained people, and much of that training still happens informally, learned on the job inside the workshop.
The country has no technical education network dedicated to boating on the scale of its fleet. That is the gap the Marina Escola starts to fill. Santa Catarina is the starting point because it concentrates most of the country's boat production, but ACATMAR is a national association and the model coming out of the Florianópolis-Continente Campus is designed to be replicated: wherever there is a marina, a shipyard and navigable water, there is demand for qualified professionals, recognized certification and a way in for those who today have no path into the sector.
