On September 21, the Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme brought dive operators, charter companies, hoteliers, a cruise line, an airline, the Bermuda Tourism Authority and ministry representatives into a room at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, and asked how the Blue Prosperity Plan could help their businesses.

The answers were practical. Operators described substantial equipment costs, a shortage of Bermudian marine professionals, approval requirements spread across several public bodies, and dock and mooring constraints. Everyone agreed that the reefs, the wrecks and the clean water are the product. The limits were on how much of it Bermuda can sell.

That is the right way to think about the ocean. We describe it as an environmental asset, and it is one. It is also infrastructure: the physical base on which tourism, hospitality, fisheries, recreation and Bermuda's international brand depend. Infrastructure has to be maintained, and the rules for using it have to be clear, or the business built on it will stall.

Air and cruise visitors spent $549.9 million here in 2025, up 3.5 per cent. In the first half of 2026, air arrivals rose 2.5 per cent and air visitor spending rose 7.9 per cent, to $204.6 million; the average air visitor now spends about $2,100.

The growth is in what each visitor spends. Diving, fishing, sailing, wrecks and wildlife give visitors more to do and more reason to stay, and the 119 superyachts that called in 2025 are the same kind of spending.

Bermuda imported about $273 million of food, drink and tobacco in 2024 and about $146 million of fuel. In 2020, when Covid-19 restrictions shut the island and cut travel and economic activity, fuel imports fell 47.5 per cent and food imports fell 2.1 per cent.

Fuel demand fell with activity, and the dependence on imported fuel and food stayed. Renewable energy produced at sea could reduce the fuel bill. Aquaculture and a fishery with healthy stocks could reduce the food bill. Understanding which areas need to be subsidised to be viable, and which can stand on their own, is the first step to sustainable ocean planning and management.

The Blue Prosperity Plan is the framework for those decisions. The programme was announced in June 2019. The first draft plan appeared in 2022 and the final draft in April 2024.

In March 2026 the Government's economic development update recorded that the draft blue economy Strategy had been prepared and that its actions could not formally proceed until the Marine Development Act is passed.

More than seven years later, development of the blue economy remains anaemic, waiting for the sustenance promised by the Marine Development Act.

The visible cost of that delay is the money spent on studies, consultations and drafting. The larger cost is the activity that does not take place while the rules stay unsettled: the second boat not bought, the Bermudian not trained to lead a dive, the research partner who signs with another island, the investor who asks basic questions and gets no answers. None of that appears in a budget, and all of it is real.

Investment follows rules. A hotel developer knows there is a planning system. A reinsurer knows its regulator and the regime it works within. A company considering an ocean investment needs the same answers. Where may it operate? What is permitted? Which environmental standards apply? Which bodies approve it, and in what order? How long does that take? What rights does it hold over a site, and what obligations follow it through operation and decommissioning? Capital arrives when those questions have answers.

Bermuda has done this twice. Tourism became an industry when the island built the hotels, the airlift and the rules to receive visitors. Reinsurance became an industry when Bermuda built sound regulation and access to capital around specialised knowledge.

International business accounted for an estimated 29.3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2024 and earned $2.29 billion of foreign exchange in the first three quarters of 2025; tourism earned another $436.7 million over the same period. Between 2016 and 2024, Bermuda's commercial insurers and reinsurers paid out about US$1.1 trillion in gross claims, which is a very large store of expertise in pricing physical risk, and ocean infrastructure, coastal assets and climate projects everywhere need that expertise.

Bermuda already depends on selling high-value services and experiences abroad. A serious blue economy applies the same approach to the sea, from marine energy and food to the subsea cables and ocean data a mid-Atlantic position can host.

Bermuda is not starting from a shortage of capital. At the end of 2025 the Department of Statistics recorded about $2.86 billion of direct investment held by non-residents in Bermuda enterprises. The question is what kind of investment we want.

The test is whether a project creates productive assets, Bermudian jobs and skills, work for local suppliers, and new foreign income or a smaller import bill, while meeting our environmental standards. Some proposals will prove unsuitable, too costly or environmentally unacceptable, and clear policy lets everyone see that early.

Bermuda decides how many forms a charter operator files, whether Bermudians are trained for marine careers, how long an operator waits for a mooring, and when the Marine Development Act passes.

World fuel and freight prices are set elsewhere, and so are the choices reinsurers and research partners make about where to go. The decisions that are ours remain within reach.

The businesses that met on September 21 did not lack ideas. They asked for clearer rules to plan around, and for the agencies they deal with to work together rather than separately. Passing the Marine Development Act is where that starts.

• Kevin Richards is a Bermudian businessman and director working across investment, technology, infrastructure, renewable energy and the blue economy. The views expressed are his own