Page 30: of Marine Technology Magazine (January 2017)

Atlantic Canada

Institute for Ocean Research Enterprise

Halifax Waterfront

For our readers not familiar, can you give a brief overview small population of about 36 million, the world’s longest coast of Institute for Ocean Research Enterprise and its role in line, and most of our population is not on the ocean. If you ocean related activities on Canada’s East Coast? then zoom into Atlantic Canada, it is a signi? cantly differ- ent picture. In Atlantic Canada about 15 to 20% – varying by

IORE is a federally incorporated not-for-pro? t corporation. de? nition and speci? c jurisdiction – of the economy is ocean

We have one and only one purpose, and that is connecting re- based. Here it is hugely important, totally an ocean economy search and industry for the purpose of economic development in this part of the country. It is really the most important sector growth in the ocean sector. So it is not research for research’s of the economy in Atlantic Canada. sake, but research as a competitive tool. So we are really an economic development agenda, and we use research as the When you look at the universities, the corporations and tool of choice. the individuals in your region, what do you count as their greatest strengths?

Please give to us in numbers the cumulative economic and social impact of this industry on the Atlantic Canada I think the fact that we are small and relatively closely con-

Region. nected means that there is good opportunity for collaboration.

The biggest city in the region is Halifax, and the total popula-

I can give you some rough numbers. There have been some re- tion is 500,000. Going back to the greater ocean economy I cent studies, most recently by OECD regarding the size of the like to say there are ? ve components: global ocean economy. In rough terms, it turns out that about • security and defense, 5% of the global GDP surrounds the global ocean economy. • energy from the ocean,

In the U.S. it’s almost 5%; in China it’s about 8%. Canada, • food from the ocean, as it turns out, is only about 2%. A lot of this is due simply to • marine transportation and geography, as many of our bigger cities are toward the middle • marine tourism. of the continent and not on the coast, so partly it is a popula- Atlantic Canada has good representation in all ? ve of those tion distribution issue. To accentuate the problem, this country sectors of the global ocean economy, so we are not a ‘one trick has the longest coast line in the world. So we have a relatively pony.’ It’s really an opportunity and a good moment in time

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