Using secondary data to examine economic trends in a subset of sectors in the English marine economy: 2003–2011

Abstract

Concerns over the impact of economic activities on the marine resource have led to many national ocean policies and international agreements for sustainable development. To guide these policies, information on the physical attributes and processes of the marine system and its associated economic activities, such as fishing, maritime transport, shipbuilding, etc. must be accommodated within a single framework. However, economic data on the activities linked to the marine resource is often incomplete or non-existent. Recent literature has focused on developing national economic indicators for the marine sector. To date, these indicators have tended to reflect national level trends; overall output, employment, and household income associated with the marine sector. Recognising the importance of micro-level indicators that capture temporal trends in the marine sector, this paper uses data on a subset of marine sectors, namely fishing, aquaculture, processing, shipbuilding, maritime transport and construction provided in the Office of National Statistic׳s Business Structure Dataset. Dividing the trend data into two timeframes 2003–2007 and 2008–2011 provides an additional insight on the performance of the marine sector with the global economic recession as a backdrop. This paper found that whilst employment in the marine sector decreased in England since 2008, output from marine based products and services have increased. The paper further found that overall, whilst the subset of sectors representing the English marine sector in the BSD under-performed relative to other sectors during 2003–2007 (or the global boom years), the sector grew faster in the post global recession compared to other English industrial sectors.