The ocean economy is growing as commercial use of the ocean accelerates, while progress toward achieving international goals for ocean conservation and sustainability is lagging. In this context, the private sector is increasingly recognized as having the capacity to hamper efforts to achieve aspirations of sustainable ocean-based development or alternatively to bend current trajectories of ocean use by taking on the mantle of corporate biosphere stewardship. Here, we identify levels of industry concentration to assess where this capacity rests. We show that the 10 largest companies in eight core ocean economy industries generate, on average, 45% of each industry’s total revenues. Aggregating across all eight industries, the 100 largest corporations (the “Ocean 100”) account for 60% of total revenues. This level of concentration in the ocean economy presents both risks and opportunities for ensuring sustainability and equity of global ocean use.

随着海洋商业利用的加速，海洋经济正在增长，而在实现海洋保护和可持续发展的国际目标方面进展缓慢。在这种情况下，私营部门越来越被认为有能力阻碍实现基于海洋的可持续发展的愿望，或者通过承担企业生物圈管理的职责来改变当前的海洋利用轨迹。在这里，我们确定了行业集中度，以评估这种能力的所在。我们显示，八个核心海洋经济行业的 10 家最大公司平均产生每个行业总收入的 45%。在所有八个行业中，最大的 100 家公司（“海洋 100”）占总收入的 60%。