Abstract. Traditional contact seal is usually used in rotating parts of ocean energy converters. It is hard to avoid leakage, and with the increase of working time, the leakage becomes serious, which will make ocean energy converters fail to work. In the paper, a new type isolation transmission mechanism, which is permanent magnetic coupling, replaces the traditional contact seal and achieves absolute seal of the rotating parts and longtime operation of ocean energy converters. This paper introduces permanent magnetic coupling into ocean energy converters and uses the equivalent magnetic charge theory to analyze the influence of magnet pole-pairs number on the transmitted torque of permanent magnetic coupling. The relationship between permanent magnetic coupling transmitted torque and magnet pole-pairs number is obtained. The paper is conducive to the promotion of using permanent magnetic coupling in ocean energy converters.