Book of Abstracts

Planet Ocean Workshop

09: 45 Parallel Session 1A (SG09)

Bridging the Gap Between Research Efforts and the Marine and/or Coastal Community

Chair: Ronan Sulpice (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Sonya Agnew (University College Dublin)

Community Outreach & Engagement in Coastal Scientific Research

In order to address the increasing challenges of climate change, the Ecostructure project seeks to facilitate the ways in which coastal communities adapt to sea level rise and extreme weather patterns. Ecostructure is a trans-disciplinary project bringinging together a range of academic research areas including marine ecology, engineering and social science, from seven universities across Ireland and Wales. The aim is to use ecologically sensitive design into artificial coastal structures along the intertidal coastlines of Ireland and Wales to examine benefits to the both coastal communities and environment alike. Specifically in relation to engaging communities in coastal scientific research, the Ecostructure project is looking at novel ways to engage coastal stakeholders by examining their perceptions of their coastal areas and any potential modifications to them. By employing the Ecostructure Observatory, a specifically tailored online mapping platform,a range of coastal stakeholders can be engaged across the four chosen case study areas.

ECOSTRUCTURE is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Ireland Wales Cooperation Programme 2014-2020

Bio: Sonya Agnew is a research assistant on the Ecostructure Project focusing on community engagement. She holds a BA in Geography and German from University College Cork and an MSc in Environmental Policy from University College Dublin where she is currently pursuing a PhD in the School of Planning & Environmental Policy.

Lakshmi Pradeep Rajeswary (National University of Singapore)

Caring for Islands: Story of the ‘Coral Communities’ of Lakshadweep, Indian Ocean

This paper explores the concept of protection of islands in the Anthropocene. It is based on ethnographic research on the Lakshadweep Islands of India. Lakshadweep is a coral atoll. The paper explores the various perspectives on island protection by the state, scientists and islanders. It tries to engage in depth with the controversies and stories associated with island protection. The question of island submergence and erosion are addressed here in the form of technoscientific interventions. The paper argues that both the notions of scientific care and religious values are informing the processes of island management. The paper is based on the narrations of scientists as well as the stories of the saints. Thus, it would explore how the notions of expertise and experience determine the future of islands. Further, the paper would describe the various scientific and social reasonings behind the death of the corals. In a broader sense, the paper

describes the perceptions of climate change on field. The paper also aims at exploring the combinations of the indigenous and scientific knowledge on marine environs. It would derive insights from the debates on nature, culture and species conservation in anthropology. In a methodological sense, the paper argues that the story of corals, sands, winds and rocks are inevitable in knowing the life and social in the times of the Anthropocene.

Bio: I am a second year graduate student based at South Asian Studies Program, National University of Singapore. My academic training is in Social Anthropology. I hail from the coast of Malabar in the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean. My research interests are on the lives of the coastal communities on the Lakshadweep Islands in India. Apart from this, I am interested in the conservation of marine species (corals, in particular). I had submitted my M.Phil dissertation to Jawaharlal Nehru University, India on the nature/culture debate. I always try to engage with the scientists, artists and activists who are enthusiastic about the sea and its future. Therefore, I consider collaboration as an important method of research.

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile (Independent Scholar)

Greim an Fhir Bháite: Song and Narratives of Decline and Defiance in Irish Islands

In 1916, around 24,000 people lived on 130 inhabited islands around the coast of Ireland. Ninety years later, in 2006, there were 8,983 people living on 70 of those islands. Since population figures were first systematically recorded in 1841, the common and generalized depiction of island demographics and island life is one of contraction or decline. However, the issue of island sustainability is more complex than the narrative of decline would lead us to believe. This paper recalls moments that frequently serve to encapsulate the narrative of island decline: instances of sudden population drop or even wholesale abandonment or evacuation in the wake of specific incidents of drowning. It observes and addresses the special resonance of such events in island memories as embodied in particular songs and the impact of reprising occurrences throughout Ireland on understandings of the nature of island life. Narratives of forewarning, peril, resilience, bravery, narrow escapes and loss serve purposes that can be positive or negative. For islanders desirous of deliverance, they can inform decisions about whether to stay or to go, whether to fight, resist or defy or, instead, to yield. For policy-makers seeking solutions, they can impact on assessments of the viability of island life. This paper considers the historical narrative context in which current efforts to future-proof island life in Ireland are operating. Contextualizing the debate around island sustainability, it highlights some of the dissonances that create challenges and spark conflicts within that inescapably maritime milieu.

Bio: Dr Deirdre Ní Chonghaile is an award-winning broadcaster and applied ethnomusicologist researching the cultural and social histories of the West of Ireland with a particular focus on small island populations. A native of the Aran Islands, Co. Galway, she has worked with, or advised, a wide variety of organisations from Comhdháil Oileán na hÉireann and Irish Islands Marine Resource Organisation (IIMRO) to RTÉ, the National Folklore Collection, and the Irish Film Institute. A research blog for her IRC-funded postdoctoral project Amhráin Árann - Aran Songs won a Blog Ireland Award in 2013.

09:45 Parallel Session 1B (SG10)

Otherworldly Oceans

Chair: Sarah Corrigan (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Justine Bakker (Rice University)

“Beneath the Loveliest Tints of Azure”: Death and Life in Ellen Gallagher’s Whale Fall Works

Located at the intersections of Religious Studies, art history, and marine biology, this paper provides a reading of African American visual artist Ellen Gallagher’s depictions of and references to whale fall, the scientific name for the carcasses of deceased whales that we find in the abyssal zone. In three works—the drawing “Watery Ecstatic (Whale Fall)” (2010), Osedax, a large-scale 2010-installation produced in collaboration with Edgar Cleijne, and the painting “Whale Fall” (2017)—Gallagher links whale fall with the Middle Passage, the treacherous forced journey of enslaved Africans to the Americas. I argue that in linking both, Gallagher’s images depict the Atlantic Ocean of the Middle Passage as both a historical space and a natural environment. More specifically, I convey that in representing the Middle Passage in and through whale fall, Gallagher envisions the ocean simultaneously as death scape and as the locus for multispecies engagement. After all, whale fall form the habitat of an entirely new ecosystem, including species that are only found on and around the carcasses of whales. She articulates and visualizes, in other words, what Elizabeth DeLoughrey calls “sea ontologies,” her concept for theorizing the sea in material-historical terms as the convergence of the more-than-human and multispecies physical environment and (the memory of) the physical remnants of hundreds of thousands of Africans. In the violet black of the deep blue sea, the death of a whale becomes the starting point for new forms of life, for sociality, for becoming, for a form of being that must be multiple. Gallagher’s work, then, opens the Middle Passage up beyond its overwhelmingly violent and destructive realities.

Bio: Justine M. Bakker is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religion at Rice University, Houston. She’s currently working on her dissertation, a project that engages Afro-diasporic literature, poetry and visual arts in an effort to rethink the categories of (and relationship between) “the human” and “religion.” Justine earned a BA in European Studies (2010) and Religious Studies (2011) from the University of Amsterdam, where she also completed the research master program in Religious Studies (2013). She has contributed to the anthology Esotericism, Gnosticism and Mysticism in the African American Religious Experience (Brill, 2014), and has forthcoming publications on race and esotericism in two further anthologies. She has presented at numerous academic conferences, among which those organized by the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA). In the upcoming academic year, Justine’s research will be supported by the Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship.

Yairen Jerez Columbié (University College Cork)

‘Marvelous Real’ Ecologies: Uses of Coral Reefs in Written Representations of Caribbean Socioecological Systems

Whereas representations of Caribbean coral reefs in both academia and the media, fluctuate between hope and despair with a focus on the latter, in the award-winning climate fiction (cli-fi) novel Tentacle (Rita Indiana, 2015), the reef is the origin of all possibilities, connecting critters across time and space and opening doors to reconduct the course of history. In Rita Indiana’s story – now available in English translation (Obejas, 2018) – the coral reef is not only the main symbol of the Caribbean before environmental collapse, but also the place that connects people with both nature and Gods through symbiotic relationships that are possible in the socioecological context of lo real maravilloso (the marvelous real). Defined by Alejo Carpentier (1949), the concept of marvelous real, points at the social and cultural contexts of the Americas, where magic is part of a reality driven by subaltern cosmologies. This paper proposes a comparative critical discourse analysis of some of the most recent uses of the trope of the coral reef in both fiction and nonfiction texts, to explore its implications for humans and non-humans in the region. In the light of research by cultural theorists (Carpentier, 1949; Benítez Rojo, 1986), marine biologists and ecologists (Barker & Roberts, 2004; Roberts, 2012; Sale, 2012; Uribe-Castañeda, Newton & Le Tissier, 2018; Shick, 2018; Hutchings, Kingsford & Hoegh-Guldberg, 2019), and of existing interviews to scientists and conservationists (Braverman, 2018), this communication aims to contribute to generate conversations across disciplines about the following questions: Could cultural representations of coral reefs call the attention of the Global North over socioecological issues in the Caribbean? What impact has the cultural representation of coral reefs on Caribbean societies? To what extent do cultural representations of coral reefs contribute to conservation efforts?

Bio: Dr Yairen Jerez Columbié is a Postdoctoral Researcher at MaREI Centre for Marine and Renewable Energies at UCC. Her research activity focuses on the sociology of culture and media, with a specific interest on the interplay between marginalised knowledge, science communication, stakeholder engagement and environmental policy. Her interests also include environmental journalism, creative nonfiction and the co-production of knowledge that facilitates the development of resilience to extreme weather events in coastal communities of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic. She has investigated processes of transculturation, transatlantic intellectual networks and the politics of postcolonialism in the Hispanic Caribbean. Between 2015 and 2019 Yairen taught Latin American and Iberian cultural studies and languages at UCC. She studied journalism, communication and cultural studies in Cuba and Spain, and holds a PhD for UCC’s College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences.

Rachel Claire Hill (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Oceanic Aliens and Alien Oceans: Astrobiology, Water Worlds and Earth’s Oceans

Our solar system is predicated to harbour multiple water-worlds, with subsurface oceans thought to flow on the moons Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. A recent paper by Li Zeng (2019) hypotheses that sub-Neptunian exoplanets, found in abundance across the milky way and commonly thought to be gaseous,

are more likely to be vast water-worlds. This preponderance of anticipated planetary oceans are the locus of immense focus for astrobiology, with terrestrial oceans becoming a blueprint for how extraterrestrial ecospheres and alien life are conceptualised. Conversely, Earth’s oceans, with sea level rises, pollution and deep-sea desertifications, are rendered increasingly alien.

As dominant imaginaries of the planetary shift from arid and d(r)ying horizons (of Mars et al) to aquatic depths, so to are representations of alien alterity recalibrated. The gradual ubiquity of predicted water-world habitats are thus reflected in a popular culture increasingly frequented by cephalopodic intelligence and aliens. Popular science books such as Peter Godfrey-Smith’s ‘Other Minds’ (2018) and Sy Montgomery’s ‘The Soul of an Octopus’ (2015), alongside Blue Planet II’s footage of octopus tool-use, are all testaments to wide-spread and escalating interest in cephalopods and their ilk.

Similarly, science fiction (SF) such as Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ‘Children of Ruin’ (2019) and Sayuri Ueda’s ‘The Cage of Zeus’ (2004) all interrogate humankind’s responsibility for species protection, environmental conservation and the potential for communication with cephalopodic kin. In this context SF becomes a means of metamodelling how ethical encounters with both alien and terrestrial life could manifest.

As our planetary imaginaries are increasingly freighted with the multiple valences of heterotopic watery space, so to are more unbounded, oceanic worldviews necessitated. Hence, rather than privileging the apparent fixity of land, the term ‘tidalectics,’ coined by Barbadian poet Kamau Braithwait, instead proposes an ontology based on navigating flux and flow. This paper will therefore use a tidalectical approach to put astrobiological hypotheses, terran oceans and SF into conversation, to demonstrate that interplanetary oceanic resonance can only be properly apprehended through integrating a more cosmic perspective within our thought processes.

Bio: Rachel Hill is on the Cultural Studies MA at Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently writing her dissertation on the contemporary imaginaries of outer space. She has previously spoken in various conferences and workshops about the intersection of astronomy, spaceflight, science fiction and ethics. Hill also regularly reviews speculative fiction for publications such as Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Quietus, Strange Horizons and The Women's Review of Books.

11:30 Commentary on Exhibition (SG05)

Pamela Heaney (DCU Water Institute Designer-in-Residence)

‘Diaphanous Beneath’

What lies beneath? Below the waters transparent surface there is growth. Drawing on research from DCU’s Marine and Environmental Sensing Technology Hub (MESTECH) Diaphanous Beneath is a collection of garments which explores and interprets the growth, layering and patterns of the diatom (biofilm organism) and crab surface. Materials are manipulated, layered and embellished

to represent the expansion of organic matter and the clear and translucent quality of the sea. Growth, action and reaction, layering, repellent surfaces, complex details. Fashion meets Science in this 3-dimensionsal visual exploration of these biofilm forming organisms.

Bio: Since completing a BA in Fashion Design at Limerick School of Art and Design designer Pamela Heaney has been involved in a wide range of roles within the fashion industry. She has worked as a womenswear designer, pattern cutter and fashion buyer, working with companies in Paris, London, Melbourne and Dublin. Since 2008 she had worked in Art and Design education and is currently lecturing in Limerick School of Art and Design. She completed a Masters in Art and Design Education in 2012. The exploration of new technologies and sustainable approaches to design are key influences on her recent work.

11:45 Keynote (SG05)

History Offers New Perspective on the Future of the Ocean

Callum Roberts (University of York)

Chair: Jose M. Fariñas-Franco (National University of Ireland, Galway)

I learned to dive in northern Scotland in the early 1980s. Below water I discovered what I thought was a wild world beyond the commonplace assaults upon nature meted out on land. It was only years later that I realised I was deluded. The undersea world had been altered profoundly by centuries of fishing. Bottom trawls had stripped the seabed of a living invertebrate crust and nets reduced a once great wildlife phenomenon, the arrival of the herring shoals and their attendant predatory hordes, to a ghostly afterglow. I discovered that the lacuna in my own understanding exists in others’ minds too. Each generation is subject to a process of forgetting what came before, believing what exists now is natural or normal. With time, the tales of old, of great fish schools that lifted the waters ahead of them like a bow wave, come to feel like exaggerations or even myth. Those stories, however, are getting a new airing today, taken seriously by scholars of environmental history. The message from the past is one we should heed in thinking about the future. Anthropocene seas are awash with a tide of human impacts. But with the right management, they could once again flourish, abounding with life even as the world changes. Decline is not the only narrative possible for our future.

Bio: Callum Roberts is Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of York (UK). His research focuses on threats to marine ecosystems and species, and on finding the means to protect them. For the last 28 years, he has used his science background to make the case for stronger protection for marine life at both national and international levels. His recent research efforts include a collaborative project with leading scientists that demonstrated how expanded ocean protection can help mitigate climate change. Prof. Roberts has published a number of books, including The Unnatural History of the Sea (2007), Ocean of Life (2012), and Reef Life (2019). Prof. Roberts was the chief scientific advisor for BBC series Blue Planet II (2017).

13:45 Parallel Session 2A (SG09)

(De-)Romanticising Marine Environments

Chair: Eugene McNulty (Dublin City University)

Philip de Souza (University College Dublin)

Piracy: From Romance to Reality

Most people these days think of “pirates” in terms of flamboyant heroes and heroines swashbuckling their way across the high seas in search of treasure and adventure. Yet piracy in the real, contemporary world is a far cry from this Hollywood-inspired fantasy. Piracy is serious, violent crime, which frequently endangers lives and regularly adds vast amounts to the cost of international maritime trade. The aim of this paper is to show how unreal the romantic popular image is, especially when compared to the grim reality of modern day piracy, and to highlight the measures currently being undertaken by merchant vessels, governments and international organisations to deal with it.

The paper will briefly review some popular myths about historical piracy, before moving on to contemporary issues. It will survey the major hotspots of current piratical activity, which are no longer places like the coast of Somalia and the South China Sea, but rather the Gulf of Guinea and the coast of Venezuela, and it will address, with the help of a few examples, some of the key legal and practical issues facing the international maritime community in the fight against piracy in the 21st century.

Bio: Philip de Souza is Associate Professor of Classics at University College Dublin, where he teaches various modules on Greek and Roman History, as well as one on “Piracy in World History”. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians. His books include: Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge 1999, Polish translation 2008, Chinese translation 2019); Seafaring and Civilization: Maritime Perspectives on World History (London 2001, German translation 2003, Chinese translation 2016); The Sea in History: The Ancient World/La Mer dans L’Histoire: L’Antiquité, co-edited with Pascal Arnaud (Woodbridge 2017).

Michelle Dunne (Dublin City University)

When the Seals Spoke: Bringing Clare’s Maritime Tales to the Surface

Most maritime cultures have expressed their views on the sea in art, folklore, literature, music and poetry for centuries. The coastal communities of north-west Co. Clare possessed an innate knowledge and understanding of the sea. They engaged with the Atlantic Ocean on a daily basis and learned how to both live off it and live with it, often in challenging circumstances. The sea yielded a bounty of resources to the fishing folk and was a source of constant inspiration for the storytellers and singers.

It is hardly surprising then that a substantial body of folklore associated with the sea was collected by a local man, Seán Mac Mathúna (1876-1949), from fishermen in the 1930s and 1940s. Mac Mathúna was a farm labourer employed in a part-time capacity by the Irish Folklore Commission to collect customs and lore in his

district. He knew the fishermen in the surrounding townlands and they were willing to share their experiences and stories with him.

A variety of folktales regarding shipwrecks, phantom boats, encounters with mermaids and talking seals from his collection will be considered. These stories and superstitions will be examined to reveal the extent of the relationship between the ocean and the shore dwellers. They may have been used to teach children and adults to respect the power and the unknown elements of the ocean.

The central role of the ocean in this community's worldview will be discussed in relation to the folklore content from a historical perspective also. Accounts from fishermen within the collection will inform the discussion. A comparison will be made between the fishermen of Fisher Street, Doolin and the islanders from nearby Inisheer who made their living by fishing also to ascertain the nature of the fishing industry in Clare during these decades.

Bio: Michelle Dunne is a PhD student at Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge, Dublin City University. Her research involves editing the diaries and folklore collection of part-time folklore collector, Seán Mac Mathúna from Luogh, Co. Clare. She was awarded a B.A. degree in Nua- Ghaeilge and English and an M.A. in Nua-Ghaeilge from Maynooth University. Michelle is passionate about the preservation and promotion of Ireland's local heritage. Michelle's research interests include the folklore, Irish-language dialects, literature and (minor) placenames of Ireland.

13:45 Parallel Session 2B (SG10)

After Capitalism – Marine Environments Reimagined

Chair: Michael Hinds (Dublin City University)

Michael Paye (University of Warwick)

Speculative Atlantic: Post-Extraction Imaginaries in China Mieville’s ‘Covehithe’, Tim Gatreaux’s ‘Gone to Water’, and Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘Lagoon’

In their manifesto, Our Mother Ocean (2014), Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Monica Chilese outline how oceanic management strategies have privatized and enclosed large segments of the seawaters of this planet, driving ocean-going lives (human and non-human) to extinction or relocation. Scholars, labourers, activists, film-makers, and writers have warned of the impending ‘fish-pocalypse’, with plastics set to become a more dominant oceanic presence than fish by 2050. Factory trawling, fish farming, and fossil fuel extraction continue to ravage the seas, necessitating an interdisciplinary response to a crisis that is centuries in the making.

Literary fiction not only has a rich history of challenging “capitalism’s innate tendency to abstract in order to extract” (Nixon 2011), but can and should be central to wider conversations that imagine alternatives to ongoing oceanic destruction. Synthesizing work from geography, world-systems theory, world-ecology theory, and literary studies, I will argue that contemporary speculative fictions of the Atlantic reject capitalist extractivism in favour of a post-Cartesian sense of relation between humans and the rest of nature.

By placing China Mieville’s ‘Covehithe’ (2011), Tim Gatreaux’s ‘Gone to Water’ (2011), and Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘Lagoon’ (2014) in conversation, I will outline an Atlantic-wide structure of feeling that prioritizes transition beyond regimes of extraction and ecological decline.

Works Cited

M. Salla Costa and M. Chilese, Our Mother Ocean. AK Press, 2015.

R. Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press, 2011.

Bio: Dr Michael Paye is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund Fellow at the University of Warwick. He was awarded his PhD by University College Dublin (UCD) in October 2017. His research interests include contemporary literature and environmental studies, with a particular focus on oceans, fisheries, oil, and enclosure. During his PhD research, he was an IRC Doctoral Scholar at UCD (2013–2015) and a Dobbin Scholar at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia (October 2015). From January–June 2017, he was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Princeton University. His articles have appeared in Green Letters, Atlantic Studies, Humanities (MDPI), and the Irish University Review. He is currently completing his monograph, “Fishery Fictions and the World-Ecology,” in which he outlines a comparative framework for reading novels based at regional fisheries in relation to Atlantic-wide fishery and oil collapse. He is the founder of the Blue Humanities Network, and is co-editing a special issue of Humanities, entitled ‘World Literature and the Blue Humanities’, focusing on oceanic representation in contemporary fiction.

Annie Lewandowski (Cornell University)

Cetus and the Whale Listening Project: Can Whale Song Inspire the Next Generation of Marine Sustainability Activists?

As a composer and performer, I create pieces and participate in projects that draw the public into the beauty and creativity of humpback whale song while highlighting critical challenges, such as anthropogenic noise and the effects of climate change, humpback populations face today. During the breeding season, male humpbacks sing asynchronous, structured songs that are constantly evolving. Each whale singer is simultaneously the keeper of a given population’s folk tradition and a spontaneous composer, auditioning new musical material that may or may not be assimilated into the developing song. Humpback populations face critical challenges today that are threatening their survival. Acoustic communication is whales’ primary sensory modality, thus they, and marine mammals in general, are under extraordinary pressure as anthropogenic ocean noise increases. Additionally, recent climate anomalies coincide with sharp declines in mother-calf pair sightings within the North Pacific population. Whales are indicator species for ocean health. When whales were pushed to near extinction by the whaling industry, numerous efforts came together to fight for a successful ban on commercial whaling. It is remarkable is that these efforts credit the 1970 recording “Songs of the Humpback Whale” with igniting the concern of the general population; to paraphrase co-producer Katy Payne, “the whales saved themselves.” As a panel member, I will discuss how I use a science-informed

perspective to create sonic environments that foreground whale song recordings to inspire awe in listeners, with the goal of encouraging audiences to participate in conservation efforts. Examples include my recent projects: 2018’s “Cetus: Life After Life” performance, and the forthcoming “The Whale Listening Project,” a two-day event of talks on conservation issues, workshops with students, and a concert recreation of the aural environment during the height of the breeding season in collaboration with the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium and Katy Payne.

Bio: Annie Lewandowski is a senior lecturer in the Department of Music at Cornell University. In 2018, her composition “Cetus: Life After Life” for whale song and the Cornell chimes, was chosen for inclusion in the Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial. In 2019, she was awarded a grant by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future for her research exploring the creative minds of humpback whales with pioneering bioacoustician Katy Payne and the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium Annie collaborated with Google Creative Lab in 2019 to create the broadly adopted public webtool Pattern Radio for teaching AI to recognize patterns in humpback whale song. She has performed at festivals and venues across the United States and Europe, including the Casa da Música (Porto, Portugal), the Hippodrome (London), the Frieze Arts Fair (London), and REDCAT (Los Angeles). She is a 2014 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow.

Tomas Buitendijk (Dublin City University)

Lessons from ‘Loot’. (Re-)Reading Gordimer’s Wave in the Anthropocene Epoch

When Nadine Gordimer referred to her short story ‘Loot’ as ‘a political fable’, she may not have been thinking of ecopolitics. Twenty years after its initial publication in the New Yorker, however, it is precisely in the domain of ecocriticism that Gordimer’s story (quite literally) stirs the biggest waves. The proposed paper draws on recent work from Anthropocene studies to perform an essential new reading of the story, one that is demanded by changes in the relationship between the human species and the natural environment during the current epoch. The paper will demonstrate that the wave looming over, and ultimately crashing down on, the heads of unwitting beachcombers in ‘Loot’ is a key example of reacting and retro-acting geophysical forces, and an indication of many other unprecedented and unpredictable environmental changes that loom in the wake of ongoing global warming.

Gordimer’s fable demonstrates a disdain for the artificial divide between Nature and Culture that is also found in the work of such authors as Bruno Latour, Timothy Morton, and Donna Haraway. ‘Loot’ can therefore be read as making the case for a recalibration of the place of the human species in a multispecies, pluriphenomenal society. The work of the aforementioned authors will be drawn upon in the paper to arrive at a simple conclusion: humility is key in this recalibration.

Unfortunately, there are those who refuse such humility and seek to tinker with the climate instead: geo-engineers. For them, disaster looms close, like the wave in ‘Loot’. To illustrate this argument, the paper applies its findings to the work of the US-based Seasteading Institute, who promote marine geo-engineering projects under the banner of ongoing human progress. It will be shown that this

approach is destructive rather than productive, and that the only possible way forward for human life on this damaged planet is to accept the agency of the wave.

Bio: Tomas Buitendijk is a Ph.D. student whose work focuses on the representation of the ocean in twenty-first century fiction. A key research area in this study is how environmental stressors on marine environments are represented, for instance through works of ‘Cli-fi’ and documentary films.

15:30 Roundtable Discussion (SG05)

Living and working in and with Marine and Coastal Environments

Chair: Fiona Regan (Dublin City University)

Bio: Fiona Regan is professor in Chemistry and Director of the DCU Water Institute. Prof. Regan’s research focuses on environmental monitoring. She takes a special interest in priority and emerging contaminants in water, as well as the establishment of decision support tools for environmental monitoring using novel technologies and data management tools. Her work includes the areas of separations and sensors (including microfluidics), materials for sensing, and antifouling applications on aquatic deployed systems. Prof. Regan is currently involved with the Smart Bay maritime monitoring project in Galway Bay.

Elaine Azzopardi (University of York)

Bio: Elaine is based at the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York which she joined in 2018. Her background is in Mediterranean maritime archaeology and she gained her BA (Hons) and MA (Res) degrees from the University of Malta. In 2008 she joined NERC’s National Facility for Scientific Diving and the Scottish Association for Marine Science where she worked for 10 years. Her main research interest is how people perceive and interact with the sea and she is currently working on the H2020 project PERICLES: Preserving and sustainably governing cultural heritage and landscapes in European coastal and maritime regions.

Roger Pullin (Irish Sea Centre)

Bio: Roger Pullin holds an Hons. B.Sc. in Zoology from the Imperial College of Science and Technology (1965) and a D.Phil. from the University of York (1971). He was a lecturer for the University of Liverpool at its Port Erin Marine Biology Laboratory, from 1968 to 1979 and Founder Secretary of the Manx Wildlife Trust in 1973. From 1980 to 1999 he worked for the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM) in Manila, directing its global programmes on Aquaculture and Biodiversity and Genetic Resources. From 2000 he has been a consultant to diverse clients, including: Asian Development Bank (ADB); Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); and International Tanker Owners’ Pollution Federation (ITOPF). Having returned to the Isle of Man in 2017, he became Founder Secretary of the Irish Sea Centre Limited.

Hendrick Schubert (Universität Rostock)

Bio: Moving from his PhD topic (ecophysiology of Cyanobacteria) to brackish-water phytoplankton communities he became attracted by brackish water ecology in general, conducting research on long-term behavior of brackish ecosystems (Schubert et al. 2010); biodiversity patterns along salinity gradients (e.g. Schubert et al. 2011; Telesh et al 2011, 2013) as well as still keeping its original field of ecophysiology of aquatic phototrophs (e.g. Gerbersdorf & Schubert 2011). Developing the classification systems for inner and outer coastal waters of the German Baltic Sea (e.g. Krause-Jensen et al. 2008), he became fascinated by bioindication and conducted studies about the biogeography of Charophytes (e.g. Schubert et al. 2015). He was founding president of of the German Chapter of the International Long-Term-Ecological Research Program (LTER-D), president of the Baltic Marine Biologists (BMB) and is director of USElab, a German-Russian binational research institution.

Hester Whyte (University College Cork)

Bio: Hester Whyte has 18 years’ work experience in science communication and dissemination mainly in a coastal and ocean context. She has worked on several EU-funded coastal management and climate change projects designing (mainly web-based) education and information materials. Outside Europe she has worked with regional coastal management projects in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and St. Lucia. A main focus has been on project outreach and distance learning tools - web-based as well as in print- for audiences ranging from higher education students to EU coastal policy makers. Her most recent work is in a communication, dissemination & outreach capacity for Climate Ireland (ClimateIreland.ie) and until December 2018 for the Future Earth Coast International Project Office (futureearthcoasts.org) which was based at MaREI, Cork. And now working on the SDG4IIII – Identifying Interactions for SDG Implementation in Ireland project where she leads the coordination of the design and implementation of knowledge products and is responsible for all communication and outreach activities.

Collaborators: Shona Paterson (Global Challenges Research Fellow, Brunel University, UK), Mar n Le Tissier (UCC, Ireland), Lisa Beth Robinson (East Carolina University, USA), Kris n Thielking University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, USA), Mrill Ingram (Independent scholar & editor for The Progressive magazine) and Ruth Brennan (Trinity Centre for Environmental Humani es, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland).