Paper short abstract:

Since the discovery of offshore oil in the mid-twentieth century, southeastern Arabia's two Gulfs have been transformed from seas primarily known for small-scale pearling and fishing into crowded lakes of extraction and circulation for the global fossil fuel industry.

Paper long abstract:

Since the discovery of offshore oil in the mid-twentieth century, the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have been transformed from seas primarily known for small-scale pearling and fishing into crowded lakes of extraction and circulation for the global fossil fuel industry. Over the last half-century, the entire seascape around the Arabian Peninsula has been remade in the image of fossil capital. Oil rigs sit atop pearl beds that divers visited in living memory. Fishing boats must carefully weave through tankers that clog the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil flows each day. Yet fisheries carry on, despite their diminished economic importance and the increasing despoliation of the environment occasioned by oil. Aside from their potential toxicity, the rigs, tankers, and ports that circulate fossil fuel are also highly securitized spaces closely guarded by international navies. Approaching them is both dangerous and illegal, but many fishermen simply don't care; for now, oil infrastructure turns out to be an ideal place to catch fish. Pearl oysters and other sessile organisms that attract fish completely encrust the footings of rigs. Platforms and tankers cast large shadows that help shoaling fish hide from predators. And fishermen often return from these sites with full nets. This paper draws on archival and ethnographic research in Oman and the U.A.E. to advance a more capacious understanding of the causes and consequences of oil extraction in southeastern Arabia, and looks to Gulf fishermen as ideal interlocutors for narrating and interrogating the petroleum century.