Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 7-2018

Abstract

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Economics: National Ocean Watch (ENOW) provides an annual time series of select employment, establishment, wage, and gross domestic product data for all 30 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes states as far back as 2005. As detailed in Section 4 of this report, ENOW covers 47 six-digit NAICS industries across the following six ocean- and Great Lakes– dependent sectors of the economy:

  • Living resources
  • Marine construction
  • Marine transportation
  • Offshore mineral resources •
  • Ship and boat building
  • Tourism and recreation

ENOW data play an important role in characterizing and determining the relative importance of the ocean economies of the U.S. states and sub-state regions, as well as enhancing our understanding of the economic impacts of natural and human-made disasters, such as hurricanes and oil spills. Most importantly, ENOW allows NOAA and other stakeholders to clearly describe the importance of the ocean and coastal economies and to access such information for policy development. This report characterizes the ocean economies of Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and assesses what information would be needed to develop an ENOW dataset for each of these Pacific Island Territories, none of which ENOW currently covers. Due to data availability issues similar to those faced in a prior NOAA effort to characterize the ocean economies of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (NOAA OCM 2016), and additional issues unique to these Pacific Island Territories, this study relied primarily on U.S. Census County Business Patterns (CBP) data, local datasets, and information from interviews to describe these three ocean economies.

Methods

The ERG team, under contract to NOAA, performed in-person interviews in Guam, American Samoa, and CNMI in January and February 2018 to better estimate the size of the ocean economy in each territory. Using a combination of U.S. Census CBP data, local data, and information from interviews, ERG developed establishment and employment estimates for industries in the six ENOW sectors as well as other related industries in these sectors that we deemed ocean-dependent in an island setting (referred to as ENOW+ in this report).

Comments

Dr. Charles Colgan, Director of Research at the Center for the Blue Economy, worked in collaboration with the Eastern Research Group, Inc. and the Coastlines Group, to create this report for the The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Office of Coastal Management. This report characterizes the ocean economies of Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and assesses what information would be needed to develop an ENOW dataset for each of these Pacific Island Territories, none of which ENOW currently covers. National Ocean Watch (ENOW) provides an annual time series of select employment, establishment, wage, and gross domestic product data for all 30 U.S. coastal and Great Lakes states as far back as 2005. Due to data availability issues similar to those faced in a prior NOAA effort to characterize the ocean economies of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (NOAA OCM 2016), and additional issues unique to these Pacific Island Territories, this study relied primarily on U.S. Census County Business Patterns (CBP) data, local datasets, and information from interviews to describe these three ocean economies.

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