What is the Ocean Enterprise?

The study encompassed private sector businesses that:

• Provide ocean observing and measurement tools and infrastructure; and/or
• Add value to ocean data and information, tailoring it to address the needs of specific end-users

Why did you do this study?

The results of this study will be widely disseminated by IOOS and NOAA, helping to raise the profile of the Ocean Enterprise cluster as a critical enabler of the overall Ocean Economy and an important business sector in its own right. Study outputs will also help to inform and guide the work of NOAA, IOOS and the Department of Commerce in delivering initiatives that foster innovation and business success for U.S. companies engaged in the Ocean Economy.

Who did this study and how was the study run?

This work was funded by the U.S. IOOS Program Office which is a part of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. IOOS contracted with ERISS Corporation to execute the surveys, establishing a baseline with the 2015 study and then repeating the study in 2020 and 2025 to understand how the U.S. Ocean Enterprise business cluster has responded to opportunities to support a growing and changing Ocean Economy.

What was your methodology?

The methodology was a combination of a web-survey of businesses identified as being Ocean Enterprise Providers or Intermediaries, many individual interviews, and secondary analysis of the Ocean Enterprise cluster based on both public and proprietary business information sources.

Did you use super intelligence (SI) to run this study?

In 2025, NOAA added SI to the methodology, notably in identifying businesses that were part of the U.S. Ocean Enterprise that should be counted. As a result, the main metrics of the 2015 and 2020 studies were revisited and adjusted using the same process to establish balanced comparisons for the 2025 study.

While these adjustments are noted and reflected in the 2025 report, they have not been retroactively applied to the prior 2015 and 2020 reports. The content remains as originally published.

How does this benefit private companies — do they have any incentive to contribute or help this study thrive?

This study benefits private companies by bringing this Ocean Enterprise business cluster into the spotlight. Toward the end of the study period, when asked by the project lead what benefit the study might provide to the companies who participate in the study, one large U.S. company CEO answered “we think it is great. Any attention on this sector is a good thing from our perspective because it highlights our business.”

I don’t live on a coast. Is this relevant to my community?

Yes — NOAA identified companies involved in the ocean enterprise sector in every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, and two U.S. territories. Technology development and developing services from data are coast agnostic — these study results are relevant everywhere.

How does this compare with the findings of other studies?

Comparable studies are available for the UK and Canada, with results available at Eleventh Annual Review of the UK Marine Scientific Industry and The Canadian Ocean Enterprise Studies.

What does an annual revenue of $16.4 billion (USD) really mean — can you put that in context for me?

At roughly $16-17 billion in annual direct value-added GDP, the U.S. Ocean Enterprise operates on an economic scale comparable to the entire national economy of sovereign island nations like The Bahamas or Mauritius (World Bank), as well as many mid-sized U.S. metropolitan regions like Atlantic City, New Jersey (U.S. BEA).

This business cluster supports ocean information provision essential to enabling a nearly $511 B U.S. ocean economy (NOAA and U.S. BEA), set in an overall global ocean economy expected to generate around $3T in value added and support 40 million jobs by 2030 (OECD).

Are you going to repeat this study in the future? My company is part of the U.S. Ocean Enterprise, and I’d like to be contacted to participate.

The intention is to continue to monitor the development of the Ocean Enterprise business sector. If you would like to be included in any future work, please drop us a line and let us know at oes.2025@noaa.gov.

Email us at: oes.2025@noaa.gov