Paper short abstract:

Ethology was defined and redefined through different perspectives, constituting a peculiar trajectory as multidimensional science. I intend to elucidate the controversies and historical, ontological and epistemological particularities in the development of the marine mammals behavior, since they developed from dialogues and dissolutions of borders between local knowledge and scientific knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Knowledge about the marine-mammals behavior has developed from networks of connections between different types of information. Ethology is the study of animal behavior, and hence the study of the living animal, of its perceptions and interactions with the environment. To study the behavior of marine species, it is necessary to have specific knowledge about the marine environment. In the case of whales, it is very difficult to observe their behavior, geographic locations and to follow their migratory routes, without maritime-local knowledge, and without the aid of underwater technologies. Currently, the scientific practices of marine mammal ethology constitute sociotechnical networks with the participation of different actors and actants. In the first voyages of observation and study of the marine animals behavior, it was necessary for the naturalists to enter an unknown maritime world, as well as to know about navigations. According to Odile Gannier, before the end of the eighteenth century, there were no naturalists on board. Some naturalists traveled, but were given other functions besides the observation of the marine fauna. Thus, the first naturalistic knowledge about marine-animals arose through dialogue and cooperation between these different actors who were the crew of the ships: exploring-travelers, sailors, whalers, naturalists and marine-animals. In this work, I intend to highlight the role of these networks in the production of ontoetologies about the multiplicity actors that inhabit the marine universe. Through relational perspectives, we can rethink the seas as boundary landscapes that cross, translate, and dissolve physical and ontological boundaries, shared by a multiplicity of subjects, human and non-human, in symmetrical relationships, and working together. Finally, we can reflect on the importance of crossings of physical, epistemological and ontological boundaries, among seamen, ethologists and marine-animals, in the production of scientific knowledge, as well as in the construction of a non-anthropocentric and non-eurocentric oceanic history.