Short Abstract

Aquatic sciences are tasked with facilitating both the protection and exploitation of marine and freshwater environments. In this combined format panel, we explore the frictions that emerge when navigating the many ways of knowing and intervening in resilient aquatic futures.

Description

Aquatic environments are increasingly threatened by a host of complex and overlapping phenomena: acidification, eutrophication, temperature increase, biodiversity loss and pollution. These processes strain and transform many marine and freshwater ecosystems and the diverse organisms, processes and relations which compose and rely on them. Marine and freshwater scientists are often tasked with protecting these ecosystems from some forms of anthropogenic influence while simultaneously contributing towards more “sustainable” visions of aquatic futures.

These visions often invoke the notion of resilience, the ability for environments to resist, adapt to, and recover from extreme stress. The heterogeneous definitions and applications of ‘resilience’ to aquatic systems point to the underlying frictions between different ways of knowing and intervening in aqueous environments. Scientists are asked to provide ecological rationales for No-Take zones and Marine Protected Areas in some regions while suggesting catch limits for others; or to argue for moratoria to deep sea mining while contributing to knowledge and material infrastructures aiming to minimise the harm of extracting rare earth minerals required for the green-electric transition; or to contribute to new technoscientific methods for rewilding ecosystems while advancing technologies and methods for aquaculture.

This panel invites empirical and theoretical contributions that explore how aquatic sciences navigate the frictions of researching aquatic resilience: Resilience of what and for whom? What are the “goods” of aquatic resilience, and through what actions of care and valuation are they enacted? What versions of resilient futures come to count as valuable and worthy of care and protection through sciences’ relations with seas, oceans and freshwater environments? How do aquatic researchers experience and negotiate frictions in their research practices, especially vis-a-vis (techno)solutionist expectations?

At the end of the combined panel, a roundtable will help us think through the presentations and reflect on how STS work can contribute to articulating good versions of resilient aquatic futures.

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