Paper short abstract:

Oceans research is called upon to help guide environmental transitions towards cleaner futures. We explore two oceanographic research expeditions, with different epistemic foci, exploring how they perform complex (dis)engagements with potential environmental futures in their “ship” floor practices.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental transitions are simultaneously seen as major challenges and potential solutions for life in the anthropocene. With the current UN decade of ocean science, oceanographic research has been given a lead role in addressing these transitions. We ethnographically explore two oceanographic research expeditions, one geological and one biological, yet both concerned with doing and intervening in climate and environmental futures. During the geological research expedition, in the deep Atlantic, scientists studied the potential of deep sea canyons as natural laboratories for investigating sediment plumes similar to ones created in deep sea mining, as the deep sea is seen as the last frontier to extract rare minerals dubbed necessary for the clean energy transition. The biological expedition, off the coast of northern Scotland, tried to understand how almost-extinct biogenic mussel reefs can be transplanted onto the foundations of wind farms in the North Sea, a move to “rewild” it and thus induce increased ecosystem services (food for human consumption and larger CO2 uptake and burial). In our paper we contrast how epistemic differences onboard a research vessel perform multiple and complex (dis)engagements with potential environmental futures: The untold environmental disasters brought on by deep sea mining against the committed scientific work to mitigate damage; and the need to understand the ecology of rapidly disappearing ecosystems against the call to rewild them for further extraction by so-called ecosystem services. Rather than an uncompromising critique or a complacent testimonial, we suggest to embrace the epistemic, practical and political complexities of environmental futures.