Marine resources in a narrow sense refers to the traditional marine organisms, chemical elements dissolved in water and freshwater, the energy contained in seawater.

In a narrow sense, marine resources include traditional marine organisms, chemical elements dissolved in seawater and freshwater, the energy contained in seawater, and the mineral resources of the seabed, all of which are substances and energies directly related to the seawater body itself.

Marine resources are the natural sources of the means of production and subsistence in the oceans. Marine resources include marine mineral resources, seawater chemical resources, marine biological (aquatic) resources and marine power resources.

Marine mineral resources are mainly oil, coal, iron, aluminum vanadium, manganese, copper, quartz research. Seawater chemical resources are mainly chlorine, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, iodine, uranium, gold, nickel, etc., which are dissolved in seawater, its nature with marine mineral resources, are mineral resources (as distinguished from biological resources), but its development methods are completely different from the method of marine mineral resources.

World aquatic products, 85% of the production from the ocean. Fish as the main body, accounting for more than 80% of the world's total marine aquatic products, as well as rich algal resources. Seawater is rich in seawater chemical resources, has found more than 80 kinds of seawater chemical substances. Among them, 11 kinds of elements (chlorine, sodium, magnesium, potassium, sulfur, calcium, bromine, carbon, strontium, boron and fluorine) accounted for more than 99.8% of the total amount of dissolved substances in seawater, and can be extracted from more than 50 kinds of chemical substances.