This report was prepared for and funded by the Florida State Department of Environmental Protection with the encouragement of members from the Florida Ocean Alliance, Florida Oceans and Coastal Resources Council and other groups with deep interests in the future of Florida’s coast. It is a preliminary study of Florida’s Ocean and Coastal Economies based only on information currently found within the datasets of the National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP). It reflects only a portion of the value of Florida’s coastal-related economy and should not be considered comprehensive. A more customized study based on the unique coastal and ocean-dependent economic activities of the State of Florida should be carried out to complete the picture of Florida’s dependence upon its coasts.
The information in this Phase I is limited to the datasets compiled by the NOEP for all Coastal and Great Lakes states (www.OceanEconomics.org). The NOEP defines two separate but overlapping categories of economic activities to measure the value of Florida’s coast to the economy: the Ocean Economy and the Coastal Economy. For example, industries for the Tourism & Recreation sector of the Ocean Economy will also be found in the supersector for leisure industries, used in the Coastal Economy. The NOEP currently uses six sectors of economic activities derived from broader categories of the National Income and Product Accounts as the foundation for the Ocean Economy: Coastal Construction, Marine Living Resources, Marine Transportation, Offshore Minerals, Ship & Boat Building and Repair, and Coastal Tourism & Recreation. All of these depend on the oceans in a direct way. The Coastal Economy represents the full range of all economic activities that occur in coastal geographies, reported as the aggregate of twelve Super-sector categories developed and reported by the Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics
