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Short abstract

It is commonly supposed that it is inappropriate for scientists to characterise ecosystems in terms of their health. I show, using marine examples, that such evaluative terminology is indispensable in the life sciences, and has the potential to be beneficial for humans and non-humans alike.

Long abstract

Much work in the life sciences grapples with problems of evaluation. For instance, target 14.2 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals aims at achieving 'healthy and productive' oceans. The terminology of ocean health, and more broadly, environmental health, is widespread throughout the life sciences. Similarly widespread, however, is condemnation of such terminology, from a variety of disciplines: organisms can literally be healthy, but for ecosystems this is a metaphor which problematically smuggles value judgements into otherwise value-neutral scientific characterisations of the environment.

Drawing on examples from the ocean sciences, and connecting them with work on health in organisms, I complicate this picture: first, I show that similar issues around value judgements apply to many concepts which are important to the sciences but which are not subject to the same criticism as ocean health. Second, I show that the evaluative and perspectival nature of 'health' and other concepts is essential to their usefulness as scientific tools. Third, I show that, given their evaluative nature, these concepts offer important avenues for factoring the interests of different people (and non-human organisms) into the practices of science.

Ocean health and similar concepts thereby present opportunities as well as risks: they can be used to foster more fruitful theories for understanding environments and their relevance for living things. I finish by sketching out an approach to assessing ocean health which allows for both scientific measurement and variation in perspective. This points towards ways of answering the question of 'resilience of what and for who?'.

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Short abstract

We provide an overview of marine stations in France and the UK where various ways of knowing and intervening about the ocean coexist. By analysing the temporalities, institutional histories, and local entanglements of stations, we reveal contrasting visions of resilient aquatic futures.

Long abstract

Marine stations are often described in the STS literature as hybrid spaces between laboratories and field sites, urban academic centres and coastal peripheries, and basic and applied research. Building on a comparative analysis of British and French marine stations, we argue that they are also sites where different ways of knowing and intervening about the ocean are enacted.

By mapping the diversity of marine stations and their trajectories, we offer an overview of how various research orientations coexist since their emergence in the 19th century. Some stations, like Roscoff, historically emphasize long-term monitoring and zoological research and progressively contributed to conservation of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Others, like SAMS in Oban, are more directly involved in aquaculture and regional fisheries, although the balance between basic and applied research continues to evolve.

These contrasting orientations not only distinguish stations: within each station, multiple research cultures often coexist. Moving beyond isolated case studies, we connect stations across scales and show that they develop divergent relationships with the past, present, and future of local and global aquatic environments. Depending on the scale of analysis and changing social demand, marine stations appear either as tools producing knowledge to conserve ecosystems, or for exploiting them for the socio-economic development of coastal communities.

We explore how these visions of the purpose of marine stations are practised and experienced by researchers, and the potential frictions they generate. Analysing the temporalities, institutional histories, and local entanglements of these stations reveals how contrasting visions of resilient aquatic futures coexist.

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Short abstract

Historically erased, groundwater fauna indicators for groundwater quality increasingly question the resilience of EU water governance, challenging currently prioritized chemical metrics. Whose resilience counts when subterranean life reframes care, accountability, and visibility in aquatic futures?

Long abstract

Groundwater, the world’s largest terrestrial freshwater biome, has long been managed as a resource, ignoring its role as a habitat. Research by aquatic ecologists reveals groundwater fauna (stygofauna) as a critical, yet overlooked, indicator of ecological health and resilience. Through (long-term) groundwater monitoring, basic research demonstrates how stygofauna, highly endemic, sensitive to pollution, and historically excluded from policy and regulation, reframes groundwater as a living ecosystem rather than a mere water reserve. This shift challenges dominant technoscientific paradigms that prioritize chemical and quantitative metrics over biological integrity.

Based on participant observation of and sample drives of aquatic ecologists in Germany and Croatia, we explore stygofauna as a boundary object, bridging scientific, policy, and public imaginaries of aquatic futures. Stygofauna offer a living archive of environmental change: Their presence (or absence) narrates stories of urbanization, agricultural runoff, and climate stress, revealing groundwater as a dynamic, social-ecological assemblage that unsettles standard indicators of “good groundwater status”. Yet, integrating stygofauna into regulatory frameworks such as the EU Water Framework Directive is fraught with tension: Who defines “resilience” when indicator species conflict with extractive logics? How do aquatic ecologists negotiate the epistemic authority of policy makers and the power of lobbyists with the material agency of subterranean life? With this contribution, we argue that stygofauna’s emergence as “policy tool” is not just a technoscientific “update” but rather a political act that redistributes care, accountability, visibility in water governance. What versions of aquatic resilience become legible when groundwater is recognized as habitat?

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Short abstract

Notions of ecological repair are central in the development of techniques for managing water ecosystems but strategies differ in their underlying principles and sociomaterial implications. We argue that different approaches force us to reconsider the role of humans as agents in aquatic environments.

Long abstract

Aquatic environments are increasingly framed through the language of resilience, restoration, and techno-fixes, as ways to reimagine aquatic futures. However, the specific strategies to achieve them remain contested and raise questions about what exactly should be sustained or restored, for whom, and through which forms of anthropogenic intervention. Drawing on ethnographic research on approaches to the management, conservation, and restoration of Finnish lakes and coastal areas, our research sheds light on diverse knowledge practices and their contribution to imaginaries of aquatic futures. We approach knowledge broadly, including scientific research, environmental management practices, and historically embedded cultural and economic relations with water bodies. These different modes of knowing involve sensory engagements, temporal care, or evaluative frameworks, which are linked to diverse approaches to the responses humans offer to threats to (and from) water ecosystems, such as traditional conservation practices or radical ecoengineering. The different tools, frameworks, and traditions that different knowledge communities have at their disposal do not only yield diverse evaluations about the urgency of the current ecological crises but also radically different imaginaries of what a desirable future looks like. By tracing how these sometimes-conflicting approaches are grounded in specific practices and imaginaries of care, we highlight the frictions that characterize the protection of aquatic ecosystems. Attending to the care dimensions of environmental management, the presentation argues that the current crisis, and the foretold change of geological epoch, force us to reconsider the role of humans as agents in and of nature in aquatic environments.

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Short abstract

Scientists are key actors in the process of imagining and making knowledge for more resilient aquatic futures. In the delta region of Zeeland, the Netherlands, efforts to create transdisciplinary knowledge highlight contestations around epistemic authority and what constitutes a ‘good’ future.

Long abstract

Deltas are environments where the fresh water of rivers meet the salty waters of the sea. As climate change accelerates, deltas are increasingly becoming frontiers where risk, expropriation, exploitation, and transformation are up for negotiation (Cons 2025). The Dutch province of Zeeland, situated in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta, is one such frontier. Once a series of islands at the river mouth, Zeeland now boasts one of the most extensive coastal defense infrastructures in the world. It is nevertheless one of the regions in the Netherlands most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels, increasing salinity in the soil, and freshwater scarcity. This raises serious concerns about the sustainability of maintaining manmade separations between land and sea.

In this context, scientists are key actors in the process of imagining and making knowledge for more resilient aquatic futures. Based on ethnography and interviews at a new transdisciplinary research center in Zeeland, this paper explores the tensions that emerge when developing new ways of making scientific knowledge. We ask, how are transdisciplinary collaborations imagined and constructed in practice? And what kinds of futures do they bring within reach? Focusing on research explicitly framed in terms of sustainability, resilience, and working across and beyond disciplinary boundaries, we highlight contestations around epistemic authority and what constitutes ‘good’ knowledge for resilient aquatic futures. Efforts to create transdisciplinary knowledge in Zeeland show that there are many heterogeneous ways of engaging with delta futures, what they should look like, and who they are for.

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Short abstract

While deep sea researchers study ocean resilience they also maintain the resilience of knowledge co-production itself. This contribution examines how scientists enact what counts as 'good' research in multi-actor DSM engagements and reflects on what ocean futures become thinkable.

Long abstract

Deep sea researchers studying the ocean's ability to 'bounce back' from mining disturbance face a parallel challenge in their own work: the resilience and the goodness of knowledge co-production itself. Research on DSM is situated in a web of multi-actor relations with distinct values, interests and expectations. The frictions produced by multi-actor engagement put pressure on the values and practices of research. It is precisely how in these moments of frictions scientists enact what counts as 'good' (e.g. a good collaborator or a good research question) that this contribution takes as its central analytical lens.

Drawing from Discard Studies, I argue that what holds knowledge systems in specific constellations are strategies of (de)centering: the ways certain values and practices are enacted as good and legitimate while others are bad and get marginalized. As a result, these strategies produce uneven relationships that shape which ocean futures become thinkable. Rather than mapping structural conditions, this contribution focuses on scientists' own reflections and performances; how (de)centering strategies of the 'good' or 'bad' become enacted.

Drawing on interviews and participant observations at the International Seabed Authority, Joint Programme Initiative Oceans, TRIDENT, and the Underwater Minerals Conference, I explore how deep sea scientists narrate the goodness of their research engagements, treating 'goodness' not as a stable quality but as a contested, situated accomplishment. This offers a reflexive, experience-near account of what it means to do good science for which uncertain and contested aquatic futures.

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Short abstract

Marine ecosystems are threatened with unpredictable levels of species extinctions. Our research on marine biodiversity fieldwork practices shows how techno-solutionist expectations are replaced by expectations of a solution-oriented integration of knowledge about sea-society transformation.

Long abstract

Human-induced climate change threatens marine ecosystems with unpredictable lev-els of species extinctions. Marine biodiversity research is often associated with the hope of creating knowledge leading to more resilient marine ecosystems that are able to resist, adapt to, and recover from stress such as ocean warming and acidification.

However, in our three-year study and extensive participant observation of five marine research sites in Europe (France, Germany, and Italy) and overseas (Papua New Guinea) dealing with marine biodiversity, the notion of “resilience” was largely absent during fieldwork practices. Within the panel we would like to discuss what this absence of the resilience notion during marine biodiversity fieldwork teaches us.

How do marine biodiversity scientists deal (or not deal) with techno(solutionist) expectations during fieldwork? How is the perception of marine scientists, who are expected to provide solutions for resilient oceans, being replaced by more diverse forms of knowledge? We discuss those questions through two concepts: socio-marine interde-pendencies and socio-marine infrastructures. Returning or “bouncing back” to a previous state of marine ecosystems may no longer seen as desirable by marine biodiversity researchers. Our research shows how techno-solutionist expectations are replaced by expectations of a solution-oriented integration of knowledge about sea-society transformation.

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Short abstract

Marine scientists research environmental crises while facing political pressures. Using a case study of Argentinian marine scientists, I will show in this talk how scientists care for environmental crises while also creating resilience towards political oppression.

Long abstract

Marine environments are largely in crisis. Marine scientists research and respond to different crises, ranging from plastic pollution and forever chemicals to melting ice caps, sea-level rise, and the decline of biodiversity. By acting in different capacities - whether as researchers, policy advisors, or activists - scientists translate environmental crises across multiple social arenas. In doing so, they navigate complex terrains of emotional labor, care work, and career paths. At the same time, scientists must also contend with structural insecurities and political restructurings in academia, which leave scientists themselves in a state of crisis.

Against this background, I ask: How do marine scientists care for environmental crises, and in what capacities do they do so? How do they create resilience for their work on and in times of crisis? And what possibilities exist to adapt to changing environments while researching them?

To address these questions, I showcase a moment of care from my case study on Argentinian marine scientists, drawing on interviews and online media data. By hosting a broadcast and internationally recognized YouTube livestream, Argentinian aquatic environments became part of politically oppressive spheres. I argue that marine scientists in this case create resilience not only to adapt to environmental crises but also to respond to a politically oppressive regime that channels a strong backlash against scientific work more generally. Furthermore, I suggest that the case of Argentinian marine scientists exemplifies a regaining of scientific resilience through science communication, which shapes a science-society-environment constellation that is constantly evolving.

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Short abstract

This paper follows marine scientists in the North Sea studying the ecology of a presumably extinct oyster reef using a mussel reef as a proxy, approaching it as a problem of valuing slippery epistemic objects as well as the techniques to study what is not anymore and not yet there.

Long abstract

Rewilding practices that are concerned with restoring extinct ecosystems require learning about the ecological functioning of such ecosystems. This, however, poses a problem: How to learn about something that is not anymore and not yet there? In this paper I follow marine ecologists onboard a research vessel in the Scottish North Sea while they studied an offshore ephemeral mussel reef. Theirs was preliminary research within a larger project that aimed at rewilding ephemeral oysters’ reefs in the North Sea, which, unlike mussels, are presumably extinct. By sampling the reef and the biochemistry of the water above it, my interlocutors learned about the ecological relations of the benthic community of the reef. I approach the work of my interlocutors as a layered problem of valuing: When is an existing reef of a different species good enough to provide relevant ecological information that are helpful to rewild the extinct one? When is the sampling process good enough to learn about the relevant ecological functions of a reef? Inspired by the work of John Law and Marienne Elisabeth Lien (2013) on salmon farming, texture and slipperiness, I suggest that rewilding ephemeral reefs in the North Sea highlights the slipperiness and the elusiveness of finding epistemological proxies for extinct oyster reefs. Slipperiness here describes the responses of marine and oceanic environments as they tend to resist the research apparatuses of western science – one that rarely does well with fluidity and with that which escapes, changes and disappears.

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Short abstract

Global visions of ocean-based green transitions meet patchy scientific realities at sea. Drawing on ethnography from two research expeditions, this paper examines how marine scientists navigate these frictions as environmental futures become material onboard research vessels.

Long abstract

The global ocean is critical for the Earth system, increasingly positioned as central to

environmental solutions, envisioned as green transitions toward resilient futures. Marine research

has been given a leading role in addressing these transitions through international science policy

initiatives, which tend to promote large-scale (techno)solutions, mirroring trends in marine policy

towards initiatives prioritizing global monitoring and modelling of the world ocean, e.g., the Digital

Twin Ocean.

Yet, the ocean, and the marine science endeavoring to understand it, are also local: a collage of

innumerable spaces, places, and happenings, from regional models (Askin et al., 2025) to rewilding

projects of endangered coral reefs. Examining the frictions between global desires for bluer

futures (oftentimes in the form of policy expectations for specific, widely applicable solutions) and

local, ‘patchy’ realities of doing marine science remains essential to understanding the current

crises (Tsing et al., 2024).

Onboard a research vessel, these frictions intensify: time is compressed (Parker & Hackett, 2012)

and marine researchers are confronted first-hand with the local aquatic realities, pulled from the

ocean. We explore two expeditions, geological and biological, concerned with intervening in

environmental futures tied to the green energy transition to investigate how these frictions unfold

in practice. We describe the local, ‘ship’-floor realities faced by marine scientists navigating these

frictions in real time, examining how they negotiate conflicting ideals of (resilient) oceanic futures

made material onboard. In doing so, we consider the broader implications for the practical and

political complexities of researching environmental solutions in the ocean.

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Short abstract

Based on participatory action research conducted along the River Auzon (France), this paper explores how ecological restoration, despite ambitious citizen participation, can generate unexpected friction — and how controversies become resources for putting an ethics of care into practice in research.

Long abstract

Based on a river restoration project in south-eastern France, the Auzon River — whose hydrological and sedimentary dynamics have been altered by hydraulic infrastructure and recurrent droughts — this contribution examines how friction can contribute to the social and ecological reclaiming of rivers.

Since 2022, a participatory experiment has brought together residents, managers and researchers through technical and sensory workshops to co-construct scenarios for the river’s desired future state. The most ambitious scenario selected involves lowering a weir that feeds irrigation canals. This has given rise to a new group of opponents to the project, who are defending their right to use the canals and their heritage value.

Despite ambitious citizen participation, restoration can cause offence, spark controversy and generate unexpected friction. The action research involved in this restoration project seeks to address controversies as situations of collective exploration with generative potential. Drawing on the work of Stengers, it sees these controversies as events that ‘slow down thinking’, force us to reconsider the usual scientific frameworks and reveal what is problematic. These frictions can thus create conditions conducive to the emergence of new attachments, new collectives and new forms of situated knowledge.

To build desirable and resilient futures with rivers, we advocate a science of cosmopolitics—a science by and from care—that assumes the consequences of its own work and its participation in the making of worlds. Our presentation will report on a gradual reorientation of our work in an attempt to remake the world with heritage as with the river.

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Short abstract

Norway aims to expand salmon aquaculture but faces a “fish feed predicament”: growing production collides with sustainability concerns. Studying a national mission on sustainable feed, I show how sustainability metrics privilege certain solutions and futures while marginalizing others.

Long abstract

The world needs food, yet current production systems struggle to feed a growing population without degrading ecosystems. Aquaculture is widely framed as part of the solution: fish is promoted as a healthy, low-carbon source of protein. At the same time, fish farming is heavily scrutinized for its environmental consequences, including impacts on fish health and on surrounding marine ecosystems.

Norway is the world’s largest exporter of farmed salmon, producing roughly 1.5 million tons annually. Policy ambitions suggest that value creation from farmed salmon could quintuple by 2050, positioning Norway as an “aquaculture nation.” Yet the industry faces what SINTEF, one of Norway’s most influential research organizations, calls a “fish feed predicament.” The ambition to expand seafood production collides with growing concerns about the sustainability of feed ingredients and raw materials. The central question becomes: how should an ever-increasing number of fish be fed?

This talk examines the development of a Norwegian social mission on sustainable feed (Samfunnsoppdraget om berekraftig fôr). I focus on the work of an expert group on sustainability tasked with developing a framework for assessing the sustainability of feed raw materials. Drawing on interviews, document analysis, and meeting observations, I analyse how different concepts of sustainability become operationalized through technoscientific expectations, particular business models, and modes of quantitative assessment. Asking how certain solutions to the “fish feed predicament” are chosen at the expense of others, I show how specific visions of resilient and desirable Norwegian food and feed futures are enacted.