🩵 Grateful to the crews and co-authors who made this wild idea possible: @marloeskraan.bsky.social @rolfgroeneveld.bsky.social @simrogbush.bsky.social, Mary Greene and to Emily Liang for the great graphic.
Happy to discuss or connect with anyone working at the practice-knowledge-policy interface 🩵
So what?
If we want new possibilities for deep ocean governance, we need to account for social practices at sea, not just policies on land.
Taking research vessels are sites of ocean governance allows us to reflect on how to best serve complex knowledge needs & implement new sensing technologies.
⚖️ Policy makers & ocean managers: Scientific work at sea can predispose evidence bases (and thus policy advice) toward particular outcomes. Give scientists space and time to innovate!
📚 STS scholars: We take Latour's science-in-action to show that data production at sea is governance-in-the-making.
Who cares?
🤿 Marine biologists: Everyday life at sea can embed ecological assumptions and biases. Thinking in practices can help identify how!
📊 Fisheries scientists: Data production practices are the first step in moving to new management approaches. Can we get to EBFM if we still do SSM at sea?
While these practices may not compromise the scientific validity of the cruise, they can reinforce management paradigms and tacitly endorse certain activities, embedding these into the primary data about the deep ocean.
In short: everyday practices shape future policy pathways.
After participant observation, we distinguish four key activities for all research cruises: searching, retrieving, sorting, and what we call ‘datafication’.
Beyond study design and technical/practical constraints, we observe that routinised social practices determine what "counts" while at sea.
A cartoon depicts a research vessel over the deep ocean. Below the vessel is a complex marine ecosystem, and some organisms form an orderly procession in a funnel into the vessel. Above the vessel the funnel widens again with symbols depicting the journey from science to policy. Numbers lead to analysis techniques, to scientific outputs and finally to fisheries, rules, imaginations, products, and economic outcomes. Meanwhile, some of the organisms seen underwater are being thrown off the vessel, leaving just one fish to move through the science-policy funnel.
🌊 New paper out in ICES Journal of Marine Science 🚢 “Research vessel practices shape deep ocean governance”
doi.org/10.1093/ices...
While often treated as neutral technical platforms for data production, we argue that social practices onboard research vessels shape how the deep ocean is governed.
A fantastic opportunity for early-career scientists to connect with others and learn about interdisciplinary research. Arranged by the fabulous #SIIECS team (the Strategic Initiative for the Integration of Early-Career Scientists).
Course fees, meals, accomm. covered. Applications until May 15!
Finally, this is the result of a mammoth effort by co-lead Alina Wieczorek and a tenacious international author team: @dorothydankel.bsky.social, K. Hamon, @marloeskraan.bsky.social, M. Mackay, D. Pedreschi, I. van Putten, A. Richter, N. Steiner, @nathaliesteins.bsky.social, and X. Verschuur
It's a juicy paper and not easily summarised in a thread like this, so go check it out in full if you are interested in #policy, #behaviour, and topics like #conservation, #bycatch #livelihoods #culture and #overfishing
doi.org/10.1111/faf....
We see that the field grapples with many interesting concepts, but has trouble operationalising them: most studies present incidental findings and lack links between theory and outcomes. We present a conceptual framework that can hopefully help future researchers improve on this!
We also reviewed the literature's engagement with #ethics and found that only 14% of the reviewed papers mentioned any sort of informed consent and/or ethics committee processes. We find this alarming, given that the intention of these studies is to steer human behaviour!
There is evidence for non-economic mechanisms such as social norms, community (self-)education programs, and bandwagon effects (where one does something because everyone else is doing it) being able to change environmental outcomes, suggesting potential levers for change beyond fines and incentives
There's something for everyone in the results: geographical focus, methods overviews, even which fishers are studied more often. We also look at the outcomes of interventions: environmental, economic, social, and, importantly, the unintended consequences of attempts to steer fisher behaviour
5 years ago we pre-registered our methods (published here: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
We wanted to create a robust policy-relevant overview of the behavioural economics (BE) literature; a one-stop-shop for understanding the state of the art, the concepts, and the methods of this 'trendy' field.
Hot off the #MarSocSci press: A systematic review of behavioural economics in #fisheries. We read 140 papers and present insights into the mechanisms, interventions, and outcomes of the field. From social and cognitive biases to policy recommendations - it's all here: doi.org/10.1111/faf....
🧵👇
Finally, I'm curious to hear how this thinking might apply to other cases: offshore wind farms and GMO food come to mind in the environmental domain, but also AI and even public health surely have instances where "scientifically rational" governance is foiled by public opposition - ideas welcome!
We offer some ideas for how contestation can be facilitated and social license to operate can be understood in anticipation of, rather than in reaction to, environmental policy debates. Read more here or DM me for a PDF copy
doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...
Contestation should therefore be invited as part of the policy process, not shied away from! Natural scientists work to resolve uncertainties about marine environments, and social scientists can ensure that stakeholder concerns are understood even before contestation begins!
The interesting thing is that, at least for now, support AND opposition to mesopelagic fishing can be backed by science, and the scientists we spoke to didn't agree. So while it's important to resolve scientific uncertainties, values and worldviews also cause disagreement, even amongst scientists.
Turning to mesopelagic fishing, social science methodologies really delivered: Through stakeholder consultation we identified contested facets of mesopelagic fishing, even though it has only really been performed experimentally! Not a crystal ball, but insight into how legitimacy is built
(This of course makes one think of the greatest example of "science is not enough": climate change! We have known about the adverse effects of CO2 emissions for more than a century, but scientific consensus has been far less important than political will)
See the paper for more, but the short version is that public and political contestation was not solved by more scientific certainty. Rather, conflicting personal interests, moral beliefs, and compatibility with existing institutions underpinned opposing views.
What WAS available: willing stakeholders and three analogous case studies (reduction fisheries, pulse fishing, and deep-sea mining). We used a legitimacy framework to untangle why some activities go ahead without opposition while others are hotly contested.
My co-authors and I started out with an assignment: try to understand what the social acceptability of future deep-sea fishing might be. We quickly realised that this is empirically challenging - asking people whether they would support some faraway and hypothetical activity isn't so robust.
Perhaps difficult reading in a time when it can feel like scientists are screaming into the void, but I'd like to introduce you to an article about why "the best available science" is simply not enough to effectively make decisions about policy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
After year-long social media hiatus, let's see what BlueSky can do! My research puzzles over the role of science in deep ocean governance. Follow me for musings on interdisciplinary #SocialScience, early-career experiences, and other things related to #STS, #ICES, #SIIECS, #MarSocSci, & #DeepSea