Fundamental to sustaining the financial support of a coastal ocean observing system is an intimate knowledge of users and their decision-making processes in order to maximize the worth of ocean observations to them. This article explores the evolving mission of GoMOOS (the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System), its costs of providing near real-time observations and observing products, possible methods to assess the benefits of an ocean observing system, and a method for indexing the importance—and thus, potentially, the economic value—that users attach to these observations and products.