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TMAF has worked with partners to pre- pare a series of research studies to under- stand the value of the Blue Economy and BlueTech in San Diego. But we do not believe that we are unique in the U.S. We represent the biggest concentrated cluster with an estimated 200 BlueTech organi- zations, but we estimate there are 4,000+ BlueTech companies nationally that have never been studied like we have begun to study our region. We use our cluster and unique studies as a case study to help en- courage other parts of the U.S. to create formal BlueTech clusters. The San Diego Maritime Industry Re- port 2012 is the base study of the regional Blue Economy showing (based on 2011 data) 46,000 direct jobs and $14 billion in direct revenue annually. The Maritime Alliance represents the maritime tech- nology or BlueTech sub-industry group, which was invisible until we organized the cluster. BlueTech proved to be the largest, fastest-growing part of the local Blue Economy with 19,000 direct jobs and $6.2 billion in direct revenue. Many of our BlueTech companies are growing 15-35% per annum typically with 98- 99% sales outside the San Diego region of which 40-60+% are exports. The San Diego Regional Economic Development Council now considers us to be a key cluster in the regional Innovation Econ- omy. On July 21, 2014 – the last day of the 60 day comment period – The Maritime Al- liance submitted a document requesting changes under the 2017 NAICS revision process. To put this in perspective, the San Diego Report showing $14 billion in direct revenue (before indirect and in- duced job consideration) did not include tourism. Based on current NAICS codes, the NOAA National Ocean Watch por- tal calculates that “All Ocean Sectors” in San Diego County in 2011 were $5.6 billion, which included $3.8 billion of tourism and recreation. So that would be $1.8 billion (net of tourism) in ocean in- dustries. In the 2012 report, $1.4 billion was identifi ed as “Traditional Maritime Exclusive Industries” which one could roughly compare with the NOAA number of $1.8 billion. The other two big seg- www.marinetechnologynews.com MTR #7 (18-33).indd 21 8/27/2014 1:32:54 PM
