Elusive coral and fish: Reconsidering the shore-offshore separation in Caribbean archipelagos

About the seminar:
To deathly stories of marine biodiversity loss, this talk adds stories of deep connectivity and multispecies migrations that cut across the simultaneous promotion of coral restoration near-shore and gas exploration offshore in Colombian governmental strategies to meet international commitments in the United Nations Convention on Climate Change. Sofía Rivera’s argument is that these historically and spatially situated relations in the Caribbean of Colombia are elusive—hard to grasp and predict—when using only the lens of extinction. The limits of coral restoration experiments and artisanal fishing far out in the sea indicate vital spaces of transit that transgress shore/near-shore/offshore separations. This analysis offers a geography of disappearance to extinction studies, an approach to separations within the sea in times of climate change, and attention to a region overlooked in social research.

About the seminar series:
Covering more than 70% of the planet, with 10 million+ species and counting, and the planet’s largest carbon sink, the Ocean is of urgent consideration in Anthropocene debates. Whilst the Anthropocene focusses on man’s influence on our world as a whole, the blue turn in humanities and social sciences specifically recognises the importance and urgency of considering humankind’s relationship to bodies of water and the vital role they play in climate change consequence and mitigation, biodiversity, and multispecies activity.

This seminar series will bring together leading scholarship representing diverse geographical and social contexts of Latin America, with a focus on human-ocean relationships and how these support or disrupt the current state of Blue Anthropocene crisis in which we find ourselves.

These seminars are organised by Rebecca Irons, UCL and hosted by Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene project a collaboration between UCL, CIESAS in Mexico and UFRGS in Brazil and SHS UCL Anthropocene.

Blue Anthropocene in Latin America is a virtual seminar series hosted by Embodied Inequalities of the Anthropocene and SHS UCL Anthropocene.