Noëlle Boucquey

This chapter applies critical perspectives to the study of ocean data infrastructures. It draws on themes in political ecology, assemblage geographies, and critical infrastructures studies to highlight how to denaturalize ocean data infrastructures, how to reveal the ways ocean territories are imagined through data infrastructures for specific governance purposes, and how data infrastructures might also be used to increase more-than-human care work in ocean governance.

The proliferation of man-made and natural chemicals threatens coastal biota and human health, which is compounded by the potential for synergistic effects among chemicals, as well as the impacts of climate change and other significant environmental stressors. This project is studying a large urbanized estuary on the west coast of Florida, USA (Tampa Bay) to investigate all major classes of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs, e.g., PFAS, pharmaceuticals, UV filters), and a number of contaminants of known concern (CKCs, e.g., banned pesticides, PCBs, PAHs) This study aims to characterize their distribution, concentration, seasonality and the potential threats they pose to wildlife and humans. Target media for analyses include benthic invertebrates (oysters and barnacles), important recreationally caught finfishes (Spotted Sea Trout, Red Drum, Snook and Sheepshead), as well as Bay sediments and wastewaters. The project will pinpoint the sources, origins and fates of such chemicals, describe the decadal-scale depositional histories of contaminants into Bay sediments, and conduct surveys of human sub-populations that may be at particular risk from these chemical pollutants (e.g., subsistence-level fishers). The project also test novel technologies for remediating contaminants in wastewater effluent. These data will be used to inform human risk assessments for consumption of seafood harvested within the Bay. More broadly, results will be used by environmental managers to inform policy and regulatory decision-making with respect to point- and non-point source pollution abatement and the appropriateness of additional public health advisories.

Individuals from many disciplines conduct research to understand the social dimension of recreational fisheries. This diverse inquiry has produced a comprehensive understanding of the behaviours of recreational fishers, the outcomes from fishing, and the relationships among fishers, others, and the natural and human environment. The associated body of research, however, is largely disconnected across disciplines. Our goals here are to help readers understand the similarities and differences among disciplines and to identify opportunities for interdisciplinary-based research on recreational fishers. Before addressing these goals, we begin by answering basic questions: What is a discipline? What are the primary disciplines used to study recreational fishers? And what is the genealogy of research on recreational fishers? Seven key disciplines are then classified by multi-criteria related to both focus and epistemological and methodological approaches. This classification reveals clear connections among: (i) ecological science and resource economics, and to a lesser extent historical ecology; (ii) environmental history and political ecology; and (iii) behavioural economics and social psychology. We next describe and provide possible remedies for barriers that inhibit interdisciplinary research, including different epistemologies, nomenclature, and reward bias. Finally, we highlight opportunities to conduct interdisciplinary research by describing the types of benefits that each discipline can provide when conducting interdisciplinary research on recreational fisheries.

Political ecology, and its core concern with how power shapes social– ecological relationships, has much to offer recreational fisheries analyses. Political ecologists bring critical questions about how different fishers may have uneven access to resources, how particular policy narratives affect fishers, and how fishing communities are entangled with broader social, economic, and ecological processes. We explain the origins, key theoretical tenets, and methodological approaches of the field, describe the ways political ecology theory has been applied to understand recreational fisheries, and explore ways it could be applied in future research and management. With its focus on making visible the often hidden, power-laden relationships that shape the character of recreational fishing in specific places, political ecology investigations reveal the ways recreational fishing grapples with its own role in shifting ecologies and is also interwoven with resource-use conflicts and political movements. We bring our diverse perspectives as academics and fisheries managers to illustrate key moments when the central themes of political ecology have helped us to better understand recreational fisheries dynamics. Finally, we offer a set of best practices for integrating a political ecology perspective into recreational fishing studies.

Central to imagining and working toward alternate futures—futures more abundant, just, and caring than many in our more-than-human midst are experiencing now—is articulating the ways in which our present is already multiple, already pluriversal. Moreover, as academics interested in these ideals, we might consider it our political responsibility to share examples of the pluriverse where we find them. However, calls for illuminating and enacting the pluriverse are sometimes vague about what we can do beyond researching and publicizing important social movements. This paper argues that enrolling theories of care and commoning to examine everyday phenomena can be a powerful move toward identifying and amplifying the pluriverse. Care and commoning both foreground how more-than-human wellbeing is actively nurtured in collective, relational ways. Further, we argue that cities, outwardly prominent manifestations of “universal” capitalism, are in fact rich in pluriversality. The ways in which alternate realities (and possible futures) are performed is of course varied, uneven, and full of struggle. Here, we use a case study of urban fishing to document and amplify such performances as part of the project of moving toward abundant futures. We highlight especially the elements of urban fishing that resist a capitalist culture, namely, claiming time and space for rest, sharing, and connection with more-than-human others. In doing so, we show how the theoretical development of ideas of the pluriverse and abundant futures might be improved with focused empirical work.

•Shore fishing spaces in urban areas are important examples of ‘third places’.•Open and equitable access to shore fishing spaces promotes collective wellbeing.•Attention to ‘flows of care’ beyond social interactions in these spaces is crucial.•Third places foster social cohesion and encourage concern for other human and more-than-human elements of the space.•Physical infrastructure, wildlife, and water quality play a role in wellbeing. ‘Third places,’ accessible public spaces that encourage social interaction and do not represent work or home to their users, contribute to individual and community health and wellbeing. These places, however, are quickly disappearing in the U.S. and beyond due to increasing privatization and commoditization of space. Based on six years of survey and ethnographic data collection in and around Tampa Bay, Florida, we characterize shore fishing spaces – piers, bridges, seawalls, etc. – as third places, important to the wellbeing of fishers, their families, and their communities, but also threatened by enclosure. We draw together literature on the health benefits of third places and social infrastructure with scholarship on infrastructures of care and the agency of “more-than-human” actors to draw attention to flows of care in these spaces. We argue that benefits to wellbeing emerge not just from the social interactions fostered by shared convivial space and activity, but also from the “care labor” performed by other biotic and abiotic elements, such as physical infrastructure and wildlife. Furthermore, we argue that an important function of many third places is that they turn their users’ flows of care outwards, from a focus on self-care to care for other people and elements of the space. We conclude with theoretical and practical discussion of the importance of attention to these flows of care in shore fishing spaces, specifically, and third places more generally.

This paper analyzes how the more-than-human elements and relationships of urban fishing-piers, bridges, fish, social interactions-constitute spaces that offer the possibility of affecting community wellbeing. In particular, it applies theories of commoning to questions of how urban fishing spaces might affect the social and material dimensions of wellbeing. The paper argues that approaching ideas of community wellbeing from a commoning perspective enables deeper analysis of the 'messiness' and contradictions that can arise in accounting for the complex socio-natural interactions that affect wellbeing. The paper examines these questions via a case study of urban fishing in the Tampa Bay region of Florida. Employing survey, interview, and field research, the paper asks how urban fishing spaces support processes of commoning that could lead to increases in wellbeing, while also highlighting where disruptions in the ecological, physical, or social spaces involved in commoning might decrease wellbeing. The paper finds evidence that commoning can increase community wellbeing in concrete ways (e.g., by contributing to collective food security, knowledge-sharing, exposure to economic and racial diversity, and shared experiences), but that these processes and infrastructures are simultaneously precarious and subject to social strife, changes in legality, and ecological contamination which can decrease wellbeing. The paper suggests that particularly for geographies of urban wellbeing, adopting a commoning lens is useful for better parsing how the elements of and challenges to wellbeing are intertwined, and where possibilities might exist for addressing these challenges. The paper contributes to theoretical discussions about the characteristics of commoning, links between commoning and socionatural wellbeing, and shifting understandings of urban space and infrastructures of care.