Paper short abstract:

Steel and cement don't always come to mind when we think of ‘oceanic gear' but are increasingly being used within ocean landscapes for restoration projects. This paper explores how multispecies relations evolve with the deployment of this ‘gear’.

Paper long abstract:

There been a rapid increase in the number of coral reef restoration (CRR) projects across Indonesia within the last decade, however, only 16% of these projects had any kind of evaluation (Razak et al. 2022) putting into question the legitimacy of these projects for conservation purposes.

This presentation will explore CRR practices in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, within the frame of ‘oceanic gear’. Using Latour’s ‘actor-network theory’ illuminates these new underwater ‘technologies’, which are often everyday materials like steel and cement, as active agents within our ocean that produce multispecies relations between the reef and the ‘conservationist’. Humans are transforming the environment in which we live for restoration, but we rely on our non-human actors to do the work for us. How do they react to this ‘oceanic gear’ and new technologies deployed? What behaviours and misbehaviours does this trigger within the oceanic landscape, and how does that change the way we relate to oceanic non-humans?

Looking through CRR practices, I will explore how this new ‘gear’, is able to both conceal and reveal the motivations behind CRR, and also the nature of multispecies entanglements within this space. Opening the question of what are the possible future(s) of our underwater entanglements?