<p>The evolutionary mode of innovation agents within the marine innovation ecosystem (MIE) holds significant implications for the formulation of marine innovation policies and the facilitation of high-quality development within the marine economy. The aim of this paper is to investigate the symbiosis modes of innovation agents that can drive the innovative energy of MIE. First, considering the marine innovation enterprise population (EP) and marine innovation academic research institution population (AP) in China as innovation agents, we propose the concept of evolution of two agents in MIE based on symbiosis theory and construct a two-agent evolutionary model based on the Lotka-Volterra model. Then, we explore the symbiosis mode of the two agents in the MIE using the innovation size data of EP and AP in the MIE from 1997 to 2022. Furthermore, considering the incompleteness of the current data, the influence mechanism of EP and AP and the evolution path in different environments are explored by computer simulation technology. The findings indicate that mutualistic symbiosis among innovation agents is more likely to drive the MIE, as opposed to independence among these agents. Finally, some policy implications are suggested on how to keep the mutualistic symbiosis mode in the process of symbiosis dynamic evolution.</p>