Contribution short abstract:

How to adjust our ethnographic sensibility and practice to appreciate the temporal “breadths” of marine research at sea? Based on fieldwork onboard a marine biology research vessel, I query how ethnography can attend to the multiple temporalities imploding during fieldwork at sea.

Contribution long abstract:

In this intervention I draw on my fieldwork onboard an oceanographic research vessel off the Scottish coast. For two weeks I worked alongside marine scientists investigating the ecology of almost-extinct biogenic reefs and their future role in rewilding the North Sea. I reflect on how the short expedition and the tight schedule of a research vessel - a scarce resource always in high demand - shifts understandings about ethnographic time and rhythm. The scientific crew onboard changes according to the research objective and discipline, conducting research that is (often) part of larger research programmes. Like other types of working vessels, research activities onboard happen in parallel and often around the clock, leaving little to no time for diligent ethnographic diary entries. During the expedition, moreover, I contracted chickenpox, which required me to quarantine for a while and further reduced the short time I had for research onboard. How to adjust our ethnographic sensibility and practice, which often equates long fieldwork with the establishment of “depth” (Günel & Watanabe 2024), to appreciate the temporal “breadths” of marine research at sea? On research vessels different ethnographic temporalities and timescapes (Fabian 2014; Bensaude-Vincent 2022) intersect simultaneously: from that of environmental transitions, to the ones of research programmes and research expeditions respectively. Fieldwork at sea further highlights other temporalities within the research process, as I and my interlocutors begun and continued our own research activities before and after the expedition. How do we attend to the multiple temporalities imploding in ethnographic fieldwork at sea?