Blue Tech Clusters of America

Humanity is rapidly expanding its use of the world's oceans. The 2016 OECD report entitled “ The Ocean Economy in 2030 ” reported that conservative estimates pegged the global ocean economy in 2010 at $1.5 trillion and projected it to grow to $3 trillion by 2030, and World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala  gave the value  of the global ocean economy at  $2.5 trillion  in 2022.  A new study  quantified the effects, finding that everything from cruise tourism to marine aquaculture to submarine cables have grown rapidly in the past few decades. They dubbed this mega-trend the "Blue Acceleration."

A key aspect of stimulating growth and competitive advantage in the ocean economy (as in any economic sector) is the development of economic clusters,  defined by Harvard's Professor Michael Porter  as “geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field. Clusters encompass an array of linked industries and other entities important to competition.” China, the European Union, and Mexico have all invested heavily in ocean economy-centric "BlueTech Clusters," in programs ranging from the  Blue Silicon Valley in Qingdao  to  Canada's Ocean Supercluster .

By comparison to these concerted efforts to provide fundamental research facilities for industrial use, U.S. BlueTech companies struggle to get access to workspace, funding, specialized indoor tanks and outdoor testing facilities. In sum, the European Union, China, and Canada are unquestionably “out-clustering” the United States when it comes to the ocean economy. This Story Map shows the current depth and importance of the blue economy to America, and presents policy proposals for returning America to leadership as a BlueTech power.

This is a companion piece to our Story Map focusing on the blue economy in the European Union and across the Northern Arc of the Atlantic, available from the tab below.

Update: The proposed Ocean Regional Opportunity and Innovation (Ocean ROI) Act of 2022, now introduced  in the House of Representatives by Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL)   and  in the Senate by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA)  , would implement many of the policy proposals presented in these Story Maps to provide more federal support for blue economy clusters.

The ocean covers 71% of our planet by surface area and includes 96% of the water on earth by volume.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  (NOAA), “the ocean produces over half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 50 times more carbon dioxide than our atmosphere.” It represents our first line of defense against runaway global climate change, regulates heat around the globe to control our weather patterns, circulates nutrients, provides the primary source of protein for over a billion people and serves as a highway that carries more than 90% of the goods and materials that move  internationally. It is a resource unique in the known universe and represents the fundamental building block without which life as we know it could not exist.

In a number of coastal cities throughout the U.S., public-private partnerships have sprung up, intended to ensure that marine, maritime, and freshwater-focused businesses and industries can develop and grow quickly and equitably. These partnerships have evolved using different models and means of support and coordination, and are typically referred to as BlueTech clusters—particularly when they focus on innovation.

While there is often differentiation between saltwater and freshwater when it comes to science, policy, and advocacy among key stakeholder groups, BlueTech clusters can at times cross these traditional boundaries because the activities and technology developed by their members is agnostic when it comes to relative levels of salinity in the liquid medium in which they operate.

The federal government has an opportunity to dramatically accelerate sustainable economic growth nationwide by stimulating the collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship in BlueTech clusters, all of which are significant byproducts of the cluster model of business development that has proven successful in other fields. Bringing small innovators together with larger established entities working on an aligned set of issues and priorities spurs growth and makes the resulting business ecosystem far greater than the sum of its individual parts. It is also important to protect the vital supply chain needed for America to boost its standing as a BlueTech power.

The ocean economy is huge and growing. The 2016 OECD report entitled “ The Ocean Economy in 2030 ” reported conservative estimates pegged the global ocean economy in 2010 at $1.5 trillion and projected it to grow to $3 trillion by 2030. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala  gave the value  of the global ocean economy at  $2.5 trillion  in 2022. In addition, the global (fresh) water market was  estimated at $500 billion  in 2010, so the ocean economy plus all other "blue" economies would have been $2 trillion together in 2010, likely much larger now. Meanwhile, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development  estimated the ocean economy as even larger , at $3 trillion based on 2015 numbers, which ranked it equivalent to the fifth largest economy in the world. These large estimate differences by reputable organizations underline that we do not know enough about the size and growth of these critical ocean and freshwater economies, because neither metric is captured in detail by government economic data globally. For example, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes used to track and measure industrial growth do not include subcategories for ocean or water-based industries. As a result, these figures should simply be viewed as ballpark estimates, and society must recognize that as with all “economies,” the ocean economy has challenges and opportunities when it comes to sustainability. Thus, we need a just transition into choices that foster and expand environmental sustainability and inclusion of principles of social equity, so that the costs and benefits are shared across all communities and population segments. 

A note about the Blue/Ocean Economy: there are many definitions of the blue economy. Some include all forms of water, some  include the ocean and select freshwater resources  (e.g., the Great Lakes), and some focus  only on freshwater . A number of organizations, such as  the World Bank  include a sustainability component as a key criterion. Some  United Nations programs  define the blue economy as “the utilization of ocean resources for human benefit in a manner that sustains the overall ocean resource base into perpetuity.” Here we are not focused on this definitional discussion rather on drawing attention to the economic benefits provided by BlueTech clusters, which for this discussion are assumed to include ocean and freshwater tech clusters.

Regardless of how we measure the size of the ocean and coastal economy, we know that it is expanding rapidly. For example, NOAA has been able to track growth in recent years in the U.S. Ocean Economy, and in 2020 it released  a report on the U.S. Ocean and Great Lakes Economy   that found , “GDP from the ocean economy grew 5.7 percent between 2014 and 2015, more than twice as fast as the U.S. economy as a whole, which grew by 2.7 percent.” The  NOAA Blue Economy Strategic Plan  also reported that that in 2018, “the American Blue Economy—including goods and services—contributed about $373 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product, supporting 2.3 million jobs, and grew faster than the nation’s economy in its entirety.” 

“The American Blue Economy—including goods and services—contributed about $373 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product, supporting 2.3 million jobs, and grew faster than the nation’s economy in its entirety.”

On a local scale, these benefits can be even more tangible. TMA BlueTech (a BlueTech cluster organization based in San Diego, California) co-sponsored a  2012 Maritime Economy study for San Diego county  that identified 1,431 organizations with 45,778 direct jobs and over $14 billion in annual direct revenue. NAICS codes, by comparison, capture economic data about only six maritime related industries: Marine Construction, Living Resources, Offshore Mineral Extraction, Ship & Boat Building, Tourism & Recreation and Marine Transportation. Excluding the tourism and recreation sector, which was not part of the TMA BlueTech study, these five sectors accounted for just $2.1 billion of GDP—meaning a fuller assessment of the economic clout of the maritime economy was actually 6.7 times greater than the comparable U.S. government statistics.

The first official  Marine Economy Satellite Account  statistics, compiled in  report  and  infographic  form by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) found that the American marine economy produced $397 billion in current-dollar value in 2019, or 1.9% of the national GDP.

The data cited in the following maps is sourced from the  National Ocean Economics Program , maintained by the Center for the Blue Economy at the  Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey . It encompasses only direct economic contributions, and not indirect effects, thus the numbers represented here may be more conservative than other assessments or economic impact studies conducted by individual states or municipalities. The authors chose this database to create these illustrations because it allows direct comparisons among states and has a consistent, traceable methodology over time. 

This map was created by adding together the 2018 ocean economy data of all coastal counties that intersect with each congressional district, showing the sum of the county-level ocean economies contributing value to a Representative's constituency. Note: this method does lead to some overcounting between congressional districts in the same state overlapping and/or bordering the same county or counties. (There is no overcounting between states). For example, in areas with one large county and multiple congressional districts, such as San Diego or Houston, multiple congressional districts have the same ocean economy data, sharing the values derived from San Diego County, CA or Harris County, TX.

Professor Michael Porter at Harvard Business School  defined clusters  as “geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field. Clusters encompass an array of linked industries and other entities important to competition.” Perhaps the two best known clusters in the United States are Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with other internationally influential ones including the Singapore financial services cluster, the German automotive industry cluster, the Italian luxury clothing cluster, and the Boston area healthcare and life sciences cluster. BlueTech Clusters are an example of “innovation clusters,” defined organizations focused on innovation, composed of independent entities that have home-base operations within a defined geographic range and managed by a legal entity with distinct funding and leadership. 

Key aspects of cluster formation typically include a combination of directed government support and chance economic and sociocultural factors, as delineated in the  Porter diamond  model. An important distinction to keep in mind is that between clusters, composed of an array of corporations and other institutions, and cluster organizations; individual corporate entities that work to bolster a cluster, often by serving as startup incubators, lobbying bodies, and discussion forums. For example, all the film and cinema-related entities in Hollywood are part of the Hollywood cluster, while the  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  is a cluster organization.

For example, in 2015 NOAA published the  Ocean Enterprise Study , focusing on clusters in US business activity in ocean measurement, observation, and forecasting. They produced the map below of several hundred targeted organizations which drew substantial portions of their revenue from providing or using ocean enterprise data. Not surprisingly, most activity was clustered in major coastal metro areas such as Seattle, Boston, and the California and Florida coastal cities, though occasional "remote" ocean information-focused businesses far inland were also included.

Furthermore, the Commerce Department's Economic Development Agency has invested substantial resources in a project known as the  US Cluster Mapping Program , that details the geographical distribution and economic interconnectedness of economic sectors ranging from tobacco to textiles. This program has not mapped the broader, cross-sectoral ocean economy as we have, but below is one of its maps of Fishing and Fishing Products clusters. It also maps the Water Transport cluster, including boatbuilding and marine passenger transportation. Notably, it did not include "blue tech" because the term and field emerged only recently, and was not easily identifiable as a unique economic sector in existing datasets.

For example, the image above shows annual wage in the fishing & fishing products clusters of major economic areas around coastal cities.

BlueTech Cluster Organizations bring together stakeholders from across the so-called " Triple Helix ," comprised of 1) academia and education; 2) business and industry and 3) government and policy makers. BlueTech Cluster Organizations have themselves arisen from a variety of sources: state and local government programs, nonprofits, for-profit enterprises, and collaborations across all of the above.

By bringing these diverse groups together, BlueTech Cluster Organizations serve as hubs of innovation for development, and the economic benefits extend throughout the economy.

Between the fact that the U.S. government gathers little economic data about ocean and freshwater industries, and that BlueTech companies don’t belong to traditional regional organizations like Chambers of Commerce, these clusters have been largely invisible, under-funded and under-supported. One stark example is that cross-sectoral ocean and BlueTech clusters (as opposed to sub-fields like fishing or boatbuilding) were not included in the  U.S. Cluster Mapping Project  established under U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker during the Obama administration. Ironically, the Department of Commerce is also home to NOAA, yet this institutional relationship did not help ocean industries to rise to prominence within the Mapping Project. While the ocean is frequently an afterthought, the situation was exacerbated because the vast majority of industry companies are not aggregated in categories under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes on which the project based its findings.

Despite this overall lack of recognition, various U.S. government agencies have tried small-scale actions to launch and support BlueTech clusters. However, these efforts tend to be scattered and uncoordinated; by comparison to a number of leading counterparts overseas, there is no overarching strategy or entity charged with promoting a government-wide domestic BlueTech policy in the United States. There are some laudable attempts: for example, the NSF has listed “ Networked Blue Economy ” as Track E in its Convergence Accelerator grants program. This is an opportunity for creative collaborations and partnerships around the Blue Economy;  as the NSF's descriptive documents have it , "This track aims to create a smart, integrated, connected, and open ecosystem for ocean innovation, exploration, and sustainable utilization." Individual clusters have received grants from the Department of Commerce and the SBA. The Department of Energy provides some foundational research grants under its " Powering the Blue Economy " initiative. And NOAA has in recent years promoted the blue economy.

In January 2021, NOAA released its  2021-2025 Blue Economy Strategic Plan , aimed at strengthening the agency’s commitment to enhancing data services and technological resources, cultivating public-private partnerships and supporting the growth of sustainable industries to accelerate America’s recovery from the economic downturn resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan’s Action 7.1.10 calls for NOAA to:

“Collaborate with organizations and principals from Blue Technology clusters nationwide, such as the Gulfport, Mississippi, Blue Economy Innovation District (BEID) and others in New England, San Diego, and Seattle, to gather user requirements and demonstrate the return on investment in [uncrewed systems] data collections."

The Economic Development Administration’s “ Build to Scale ” grant program, which recognizes the blue economy as a key focus area for 2020, resulting in several grants to early-stage ocean cluster efforts—but this effort was intended to be limited period funding to get them launched. Additional efforts have been project-oriented and required significant match funding, which is not available to all clusters whether start-up or mature, successful or not. The domestic industry could clearly benefit from a much larger, sustained funding model, since the companies being helped are predominantly small and medium-size enterprises that cannot afford to pay significant member dues. 

One case study for how this can be executed comes from Norway, which has one of the best cluster support programs in the world. In 2018, the Norwegian government announced that it would invest $700 million in ocean research labs in a plan it calls  Ocean Space Laboratories . These assets will be used for educating students, for research and for companies that need to test products or equipment. 

China is actively developing its ocean testing facilities and BlueTech sector, including the  Shandong Peninsula Blue Economic Zone and the Qingdao Blue Silicon Valley .

Canada has established a large  Ocean Supercluster  funding program to promote collaboration between companies and existing BlueTech clusters.

The European Union has been focused on clusters for developing industrial sectors for years, and ocean, coastal and freshwater sectors have been no stranger to this movement. The E.U. has developed substantial regulatory infrastructure to support clusters; for example, the mission of the  European Cluster Collaboration Platform  “is to be the European online hub for clusters… and the reference one-stop-shop for stakeholders in third countries aiming to set up partnerships with European counterparts. The  European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis  was established in November 2010, with support from the E.U., to create more world-class clusters across Europe by strengthening cluster management excellence. A  2020 report from the European Union  pegged its blue economy growth (in terms of number of jobs) at 11.6% from 2017-2018—more than twice the rate of growth in the United States. 

By comparison to these concerted efforts to provide fundamental research facilities for industrial use, U.S. BlueTech companies struggle to get access to workspace, funding, specialized indoor tanks and outdoor testing facilities. In sum, the European Union, China, and Canada are unquestionably “out-clustering” the United States at this point in time, particularly in the field of the blue economy.

“In sum, the European Union, China, and Canada are unquestionably “out-clustering” the United States at this point in time, particularly in the field of the blue economy.”

America’s ocean and freshwater resources represent a massive and growing segment of our economy. As the global population continues to rise, so too will pressure on land-based resources and the need to boost productivity. Yet as those pressures mount, so will the risk of unintended consequences, already compounded by the growing threat of global climate change. BlueTech clusters allow us to interact with the ocean and water resources in ways that were unthinkable 10-20 years ago, leveraging the power of innovation, data collection and processing capacities, new hardware, and revolutionary thinking. Above all, they offer a collective approach that allows entrepreneurs and emerging leaders to balance stakeholder needs across the Triple Helix, promote innovation across a vibrant supply chain, create good paying blue jobs and solve global challenges while developing a sustainable blue economy.

Other countries, from Canada to China to Europe, have recognized this opportunity and are already investing heavily in development of their own BlueTech clusters, and the U.S. risks being left behind without a similar infusion of investment targeted to this large economic sector. We strongly recommend that the federal government take the following actions in order to capitalize on this unique and manifest opportunity to shore up our potential, buoy our coastal communities, and invigorate our blue economy with steady, well-paying jobs and massive return on investment:

“We strongly recommend that the federal government take the following actions in order to capitalize on this unique and manifest opportunity to shore up our potential, buoy our coastal communities, and invigorate our blue economy with steady, well-paying jobs and massive return on investment.”

We are in an “ocean race” already with both economic and military competitors. With the vast majority of the global ocean and the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone still unexplored, there is much to be discovered and utilized as we prove that we can do so in a way that does not add to the panoply of adverse effects industrialization has already visited upon our marine resources. It is, quite literally, the largest opportunity for discovery remaining on Earth, yet we cannot allow this pursuit to become a race to the bottom that perpetuates our history of charging ahead with insufficient regard for economic externalities and unintended consequences of development. The time has come to leverage the research and development potential of the federal government to partner with industries and innovators to develop the infrastructure that will enable launch of a new collaborative mission on the scale of a Manhattan or Apollo Project—in this case, a Poseidon Mission—to excite popular imagination, reestablish the United States as a global leader in science and innovation, address the climate crisis, strengthen our BlueTech supply chain and discover the secrets of the world’s depths. The Advanced Research Projects Agency model has proven successful in the nation’s history at jump-starting not only the projects it was initially intended to address, such as Cold War and Space Race technologies in the case of DARPA or reducing the cost of renewable energy generation in the case of ARPA-E, but also spinning off some of America's and the world’s biggest industries and economic drivers. The recent call from the Biden administration for an ARPA-Climate provides the right opportunity to leverage the necessary scale of investment in innovations and infrastructure that will contribute solutions to the existential crisis of global climate change that leverage the power of BlueTech clusters and our marine and water resources.

 In 2020, the EDA identified the Blue Economy as one of its key focus areas for the Build to Scale grant program authorized by the Stevenson- Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980. The program authorizes the EDA to issue grants that “further technology-based economic development initiatives.” Both the Alaska Ocean Cluster and the Maritime Blue Initiative in Washington received matching grants of $600,000 under this program in 2020, however the Blue Economy is not currently supposed to be an annual focus area of the program. Specific legislation to authorize the Secretary of Commerce through the EDA and NOAA to provide support to U.S. BlueTech clusters on an annual basis in a model akin to that established in Norway would be an ideal first step towards promoting sustained BlueTech cluster and growth of innovative small and medium-sized entities as a priority for the country, and would be ripe for inclusion in a large-scale infrastructure package, such as the one currently in development in Congress. These awards could include a tiered structure to ensure BlueTech clusters develop the capacity to handle an increased flow of funding efficiently over time and a system that encourages speed-to-market of new technologies and innovations with multiple onramps to help businesses that need the most support and are the least able to afford it compete for funding with larger companies and organizations that have built-in capacity for identifying and pursuing government funding opportunities and have typically high overhead rates affiliated with such a business model.

 One way to ensure government funding is being allocated effectively is to establish a system of benchmarking for clusters to qualify for increasingly large grants as their operations expand and prove successful and efficient. The  European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis  (ESCA) provides an excellent model of an objective third-party benchmarking and certification organization. The  Norwegian Innovation Clusters  program is an example of this method that provides on-going financial support to encourage clusters to collaborate cross-cluster and expand nationally and internationally.

The  U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone  (EEZ) covers 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean: larger than the combined land area of all fifty states. U.S. states also have jurisdiction over a significant portion of the Great Lakes, which represents the largest reservoir of fresh surface water on the planet with a U.S. coastline that borders eight states and is roughly the same length as the entire Atlantic Coast. Yet we know little about the resources of our EEZ. NOAA’s ocean exploration and observing budgets are very small in relation to the value these ecosystems provide and the potential for economic growth. We should create a strategy with funding for NOAA and to enlist the assistance of industry particularly to test new technologies and services.

The United States is home to numerous state-of-the-art research facilities paid for by federal funding. Some of these are at military, university and non-military research institutions and some are at federal organizations such as the  Ocean Technology Development Tank  at a NOAA research facility, a one-of-a-kind “2-million-liter seawater tank that allows scientists to test new survey technologies in a controlled environment.” However, most of these facilities, are inaccessible to industry and project developers. A program allowing federally funded facilities to be accessible to tech developers at cost when not in use by government programs and scientists would serve the double benefit of providing a source of innovation to the private sector, and a modicum of revenue to the science center itself to enhance its own work.

We know there is tremendous potential in development of the Blue Economy, however, we lack the information to establish a baseline and thus how to measure its growth, including tracking the return on investment for programs such as those that will be necessary to spur economic growth. We also lack a standard definition of sustainability and thus an ability to measure how these policies contribute to a transition away from industries that are fundamentally unsustainable or harmful to marine (or terrestrial) ecosystems in a way that will compromise biodiversity or cause unintended harm to other segments of the economy or nature itself.

 NOAA’s Blue Economy Strategic Plan includes as Objective 6.1.1 a call to “develop metrics that quantify agency-wide economic impacts.” This provision should, in fact, be expanded across the federal government, as NOAA is far from the only agency with jurisdiction over ocean industries or ecosystems. One concrete step that should be taken to enhance Blue Economic data collection would be through establishment of North American Industry Classification Systems codes (or whatever comes with the USMCA as successor to NAFTA) that specifically track ocean and water economy industries, leading to measurable growth. Both of our North American neighbors would likely be willing partners in this effort.

 Ocean issues cross the jurisdiction of numerous government departments and agencies. In 1997 the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) was established to “facilitate partnerships between federal agencies, academia, and industry to advance ocean science research and education.” The NOPP provides funding to support a variety of ocean-based research projects in public-private partnerships and could be used as a home base for developing funding mechanisms referenced in earlier recommendations. The National Ocean Council (NOC) was an interagency body established in the National Ocean Policy created by President Barack Obama via Executive Order. When President Donald Trump took office, he reviewed and ultimately rescinded the National Ocean Policy, while replacing the National Ocean Council with the Ocean Policy Committee that was authorized in legislation passed in the waning days of the 116th Congress. It is sensible to establish an interagency council or working group dedicated to helping agency leadership coordinate and understand what is taking place across our nation’s vast Exclusive Economic Zone, and in land-based activities that affect coastal, ocean and freshwater ecosystems. A challenge to bringing this shared freshwater and saltwater model into the policy arena is that the U.S. federal government, like most governments around the world, typically divides jurisdiction over activities, and by extension, it also separates many of its investments into these two different hydrological ecosystems. Thus, pursuing enhanced investment in this model will require significant interagency collaboration.

What do you need to do to set up a BlueTech Cluster Organization?

"BlueTech Cluster" is not a trademarked term, it's a description of an emergent innovation nexus. BlueTech Cluster Organizations have been created by state and national governments, as for-profit enterprises, and as nonprofits. Anyone is free to set up a BlueTech Cluster Organization; the interesting part lies in bringing together the Blue Economy businesses, researchers, and other enterprising individuals who make it vibrant!

Are there any "franchises" of Blue Tech Cluster Organizations, or groups that can help me start my own organization?

Yes! The Iceland Ocean Cluster has been instrumental in helping form the Alaska Ocean Cluster, the New Bedford Ocean Cluster, and the New England Ocean Cluster, spreading their "Iceland model" in America.  Here's their page on setting up an ocean cluster, the consulting services they offer, their recommended reading, and their mailing list .

Are there any associations or industry groups for BlueTech Cluster Organizations?

Yes! The  BlueTech Cluster Alliance , founded by TMA BlueTech of San Diego in 2017, brings together many (though not all) Blue Tech Cluster Organizations, in America and around the world.

Are there dedicated news sources to share updates in the Blue Economy space?

Yes! For example,  Coastal News Today  has many relevant stories and a  network of ocean-focused podcasts , including the  American Blue Economy podcast  hosted by former Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy NOAA Administrator Admiral Tim Gallaudet.