As someone involved in ocean tech, I sometimes see a similar attitude, although the number of former naval personnel looking for new opportunities helps to bridge that gap a little bit.

I've had tech people occasionally propose ideas, or ask if something sounds feasible, and one of the first things I often remind them is that the ocean is brutal to most forms of human engineering; something like Murphys Law incarnate. Weird physical stresses, bad wireless comms, corrosion of all sorts, biofouling of all the things, large temperature swings, etc. Sometimes a good day in ocean tech isn't "it worked", it's "it didn't work, but we got our equipment back out of the water." The domain knowledge involved in building or operating even moderately-reliable systems like that is hard to get without first-hand experience. There are lots of important, interesting problems offered by the ocean, but they always come hand-in-hand with these not-so-fun ones, which in my experience tends to dampen tech people's enthusiasm a bit.