Paper short abstract:

The paper proposes an imaginary conversation with members of global lionfish populations and their contemporary experiences of belonging. Within a few years, the lionfish has become an underwater villain that is featured on media and travel reports and occupies scientists and local communities. The paper interrogates human narrations of the lionfish and urges us to question how we make sense of the unintentional in global connectivities.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation draws on the experiences of lionfish populations and the contemporary mythologies and performances that surround them. As a side effect to the dynamics of international pet trade, multiplying hurricane incidents, and global containership mobilities, different populations of lionfish across the globe happened find new habitats which privileged them with favourable living conditions in recent years. Meanwhile, as a result, researchers, politicians, local populations, and tourists, have started to work together to fight new lionfish populations as invasive species. The lionfish unfolds as a contemporary mythology with yet emerging moralities and ritual practices that offers new understandings of role-allocations in the anthropocene.

This presentation proposes to imagine lionfish populations as living jesters whose lives reflect human interventions, moralities and ideas of entitlement, while being existentially connected to them. The lionfish populations and their stories are tightly interwoven with human consumerist and political desires and contextualised within the ongoing climate emergency. The contribution proposes an imaginary conversation with members of the global lionfish population, pterois miles, and their contemporary experiences and observations of belonging. It interrogates human performances and narrations of the lionfish and suggests that they hold up a mirror to moralizing risk and mobilitity narratives and urge us to question how we make sense of the accidental and the unintentional in global connectivities.