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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.