Sea-Bird Electronics, Inc.

Sea-Bird Electronics, Inc., doing business as Sea-Bird Scientific, manufactures high-precision oceanographic sensors, calibration equipment, and related maintenance services for federal agencies as a prime contractor (99% of recent awards) on a full-and-open, non-set-aside basis. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Veralto Corporation, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, competing across diverse measurement and control instrument NAICS categories (primarily 334516—Other Measuring and Controlling Device Manufacturing) with no SBA designations.

Sea-Bird's federal customer base is heavily concentrated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which accounts for 916 awards valued at $151.1 million in combined potential value, or 86% of the vendor's award portfolio. The Department of the Navy Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (81 awards, $15.1 million), the Office of Naval Research (59 awards, $1.5 million), Naval Sea Systems Command (32 awards, $1.3 million), and the U.S. Geological Survey (33 awards, $669 thousand) round out the top five customer agencies. NOAA's dominance across both award count and dollar value reflects Sea-Bird's mission-critical role in maintaining and supplying oceanographic instrumentation for the agency's research fleet and monitoring networks.

Sea-Bird's capability portfolio centers on manufacturing and servicing oceanographic sensors and profilers that measure conductivity, temperature, depth (CTD), dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, and related marine parameters. Representative work includes a $2.363 billion delivery order from NOAA (issued February 2024) for Tropical Atmosphere Ocean array subsurface temperature, pressure, and conductivity sensors; a $1.488 million NOAA delivery order (August 2024) for instrument calibration services; a $701.5 million NOAA fleet-wide calibration and parts order (June 2023) for the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations including wet pluggable connector upgrades; and a $538.8 million Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command purchase order (September 2022) for optics equipment. Work spans sensor manufacture, calibration, repair, upgrade, and field maintenance conducted predominantly from the Bellevue headquarters, with performance also at Newport, Rhode Island and customer sites aboard NOAA research vessels.

Activity trajectory has grown modestly year over year—57 awards in 2022 to 70 in 2024—with 14 awards (combined potential value $1.7 million) reaching ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months and therefore subject to recompete exposure. The vendor holds three primary indefinite delivery contracts with NOAA and the Navy: a $45.7 million IDIQ with NOAA (awarded September 2025, expiring September 2035) for equipment, parts, repair, upgrade, and maintenance services; a $2.5 million Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command optics equipment maintenance and repair IDC (August 2024, expiring August 2029); and a $1.5 million Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command CTD and Underwater Bioluminescence Assessment Tool servicing IDC (April 2024, expiring April 2029). Task orders placed against the NOAA IDIQ (DOCEA133M15CQ0039) dominate the parent-vehicle footprint, with 429 task orders carrying $29.9 million in combined potential value.

Sea-Bird competes as a prime contractor on 1,561 of 1,570 total awards in the source data; the nine subcontract positions are minor and primarily represent equipment component supply (CTD sensors, conducting equipment, and underwater systems) to prime contractors including Atlantic Diving Supply and Oregon State University on research and development work. SCI-reportable invoicing is negligible—the dataset captures only 0.4 FTEs in FY2024 as a subcontractor on a single service record—reflecting Sea-Bird's posture as a goods manufacturer and equipment service provider rather than a labor-intensive services contractor.

Sea-Bird Electronics operates as the premier federal supplier of oceanographic instrumentation to NOAA and the Navy, with no significant subcontractor footprint and no major prime partnerships in the broader sense. The company's fortress position with NOAA—anchored by the $45.7 million IDIQ and driven by technical specifications unique to Sea-Bird's proprietary sensors and the specialized knowledge required for calibration and maintenance of mission-critical equipment—insulates it from competitive displacement on core work. Award velocity, dollar concentration, and recompete exposure align with a vendor in steady-state operations serving a defined, specialized federal market with limited growth runway.