Paper short abstract:

This paper explores a history of multispecies landscapes and cultures through the braided lives of crabs, mangroves, and Filipino scientists in the twentieth century. It yields new methods for doing transdisciplinary research and new ways of knowing/storying a more inclusive environmental history.

Paper long abstract:

In 1949, Eulogio P. Estampador (1895-1982), a Filipino carcinologist, made history: he made biodiversity history. Based on specimens collected from markets in Manila as well as from mangroves around Malabon, Estampador described a new species of mud crab. While his description brought the number of the world’s mud crab types to four, a number that has not changed in almost 75 years, it also did something more, something far more productive for thinking about a history of multispecies landscapes and cultures. In particular, it was the name that Estampador gave this new species—and the vernacular, economic, ecological, and biological worlds it embodied—that serves as the subject of this paper. Estampador named his mud crab Scylla paramomosain following the local taxonomy of Tagalog fisherfolks who called it momosain. They referred to this crab as momosain because it burrowed in holes among the mudscapes and mangroves of Quezon province and coastal Luzon more generally. In Batangas, a region just west of Quezon province, momosain were known as alimango sa butas, or crabs in holes. In contrast to momosain, Tagalog fisherfolks used the term banhawin or bulik for mud crabs that inhabited, in Estampador’s words, “a roving life.” In braiding the lives of crabs, mangroves, mudscapes, and vernacular scientists, this paper shows how following species across cultures, ecologies, and languages can yield not only new methods for doing transdisciplinary research, but also, and perhaps more urgently, new ways of knowing and storying a more inclusive environmental history in the age of biodiversity.