Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork with environmentalist campaigners, this paper examines how the arrival of the lionfish from the Red Sea was encountered on the Lebanese coastline and asks how anthropology can account for transformative events in human animal relations.

Paper long abstract:

Populations of lionfish (pterois), native to the Read Sea and Indian Ocean, have expanded at a rapid pace in the waters of Eastern Mediterranean since around 2015. The lionfish is categorized by marine science as invasive. Combining knowledges of marine biology and non-governmental advocacy, the lionfish-encounter brought a group of young scientists and activists in diverse activities and entanglements across the Lebanese coastline in their campaign for oceanic literacy and against the invasive species. What work did the category of invasive, and it's playful associations with enemy-ness, do in bringing the Lebanese public to know the sea? How did this specific encounter with the Lessepsian migrations figure in changing relationships to the sea in Lebanon? As the lionfish was encountered and made known, and edible, to the Lebanese public, what kind of new oceanic entanglements were brought forth? Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a nascent environmental NGO, this paper traces how the scientist-campaigners made sense of the lionfish as both a threat to local ecosystems, but also as something they needed foster a relationship with. Through working for 'oceanic literacy' - a concept borrowed from global marine science pedagogy – the group engaged in an educational pursuit of changing the relationship of Lebanese with their coastal waters. Joining the emerging discussions in marine anthropology, human-animal relations, and oceanic epistemologies, I argue that paying heed to events in the Lebanese coastal waters has potential to open up new perspectives for a marine anthropology of the Eastern Mediterranean.