That actors - whether individuals, corporations, organisations, or states - are claiming property rights over the oceans and coasts is by no means a new phenomenon. However, it appears that the phenomenon is currently achieving new shapes and intensities. It is therefore receiving special attention from marine social scientists, as evidenced by the rising number of publications on topics such as blue-grabbing, ocean justice, individual tradable quotas, and NGO-managed marine protected areas. We observed that contributions to the topic are frequently polarised, where one side views privatisation - such as individually tradable quotas - as a saviour, and the other sees it as a massive risk. This collection aims to bring together and organise a conversation between diverse perspectives on the topic and to allow them to engage in discussion. All papers in this collection employ a different theoretical lens and apply it to empirical examples from around the world. This editorial discusses, explains, and synthesises the findings of these contributions. To accomplish this, we utilise artificial intelligence-assisted qualitative data analysis tools. The main outcomes are that processes of ocean privatisation are ‘processes of property’, whereby bargaining and discourses of different parties involved create new institutions. Distributive consequences are at the centre of interest of all approaches, and attention to power is also an important issue for all approaches.
In Aotearoa, rāhui are often described as temporary closures within fisheries management; however, such characterisations are reductive of their role as living Indigenous marine governance systems grounded in Māori worldviews. This narrative literature review examines rāhui in Aotearoa as a dynamic, relational, and adaptive form of Indigenous marine governance, rather than as a customary practice anchored in the past or interpreted through state-centric norms. By situating rāhui alongside other Indigenous marine governance systems in the Asia- Pacific, the review illustrates that these practices share a regional challenge: the risk that customary practices lose their cultural depth and original meaning when their names are used to describe state-controlled fishing rules. The review examines how customary marine governance is expressed through state-defined legal mechanisms in Aotearoa, particularly temporary closures under Sections 186 A and 186B of the Fisheries Act 1996. It argues that the government’s use of the word rāhui for these rules confuses distinct systems and masks the fundamental difference between community-led stewardship and Crown regulatory power. The review analyses rāhui through four recurring themes: relational authority, holistic governance, adaptation within plural systems, and decolonial resurgence, demonstrating how they continue to function as contemporary, evolving systems of Indigenous authority and care. It highlights that rāhui are anchored in a relational worldview in which authority is an inherent intergenerational responsibility to protect the mauri (life force) of the environment, and that they operate effectively even in the absence of formal state recognition. Ultimately, this review calls for a shift from tokenistic recognition toward a future that centres Indigenous authority as a living and future-oriented system, posing a deeper question for marine policy: what could governance look like if Indigenous authority and relational worldviews were centred rather than constrained?
Transdisciplinary research between academia and stakeholders facilitates open discussions about sustainability and marine governance (research) challenges. However, co-creating knowledge and actionable governance solutions can result in methodological challenges during the execution of transdisciplinary research. By drawing on reflexivity in marine governance and strategic narratives in collaboration dynamics, we probe how transdisciplinary research consortia respond to methodological challenges resulting from diverging scientific and participation norms. Empirically, we reflect on experiences in the Horizon Europe project PERMAGOV, where researchers together with stakeholders and end-users co-create knowledge and strategies to improve the performance of marine governance in the European Union. Challenges emerged around the adoption of a complex conceptual and methodological approach to studying marine governance change versus the development of concrete and feasible governance strategies to improve marine governance. Based on scientific literature around reflexivity and strategic narratives, we reflect on how the consortium responded to methodological challenges by further strengthening the project’s strategic narrative about co-creation. We conclude that during the consortium’s reflexive processes, internalized co-creation norms were questioned. Yet, through reflexivity, theoretical and methodological strategies were developed which strengthened the project’s strategic narratives on co-creation. Based on these positive experiences, we identify three enabling conditions, namely the expertise and experience with similar types of transdisciplinary research projects available within the consortium, the availability of time within the project workflow to be reflexive and adaptive, and the regular dialogue taking place within the transdisciplinary consortium.
Ports are essential nodes of the global supply chain that are under pressure to become ‘smart’ ports. The digital transition and possible adoption of AI-decision support tools destabilise routine port operations, creating uncertainties about a port’s future identity narrative and resulting in potential ontological insecurities. Given the scant literature on smart port transitions from the lens of a smart port’s self-identity and ontological security, this study aims to fill this gap. The study explores how ports navigate digitalisation and AI adoption while maintaining their ontological security using Pratt’s (2016) Relational Ontological Security theory lens. We conduct a document-based comparative case study of ports in the Netherlands and Denmark, using PRISMA reporting and deductive content analysis. This study reveals that the digital and AI transition is a strategic negotiation of the institutional self to maintain the existing port identity amidst (anticipated) digital disruptions. The findings highlight a clear difference in how they secure ontological security; Dutch ports seek to set global normative standards. In contrast, Danish ports stabilise their identities by aligning with established standards to secure their specialised, customised regional niches. These findings conclusively highlight that port digitalisation and AI adoption in ports in Denmark and the Netherlands are not just a technological challenge but also a strategic re-establishment of the port’s self-identity and maintenance of ontological security.
Research on maritime masculinities has generated important insights into how gender shapes identity, occupational culture, and workplace practice at sea. This paper builds on that scholarship by asking a complementary question: what does masculine conduct help to sustain within the organisation of maritime labour? Drawing on Connell’s relational account of masculinity, Fraser’s theory of capitalism as organised through constitutive boundary struggles, and feminist social reproduction theory, it develops the concept of masculinities as boundary practices: forms of conduct through which the divisions organising maritime capitalism are reproduced in everyday life. The analysis examines four such divisions: between production and social reproduction, exploitation and expropriation, economy and nature, and public and private authority. Across fisheries, maritime aquaculture, and global shipping, masculine norms such as endurance, stoicism, discipline, and provider obligation are formed within the demands of maritime work and historically embedded social relations, and then taken up and rewarded by gendered, racialised, and class-stratified labour arrangements that distribute risk, authority, recognition, and responsibility unevenly. In doing so, they help render those arrangements workable and legitimate. These processes are structured through gender as a structural relation constituted through race, class, nationality, and colonial history. The paper argues that transforming maritime gender relations requires changes to the institutional organisation of maritime labour and proposes boundary practices as a framework for connecting studies of maritime masculinities to the political economy of the sea.
Climate change-induced migration is a growing area of research, with gender emerging as a critical dimension. While the adaptation literature views climate-migration as an effective coping strategy, a gendered intersectional perspective reveals more complex realities on the ground. Women are disproportionately affected not only by climate change but also by the migration process itself, making issues such as livelihood and nutritional insecurities, health challenges, and poor housing infrastructure contextual. Therefore, the role of government, and an effective policy environment with appropriate localisation naturally become important in addressing gender concerns. In this paper, I have reviewed how the gender dimension has been incorporated in climate relocation planning, and practices in Oceania. This region is in the forefront of the climate change discussion. The paper has focused on the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) that have a history of migration to Australia and New Zealand on political and economic grounds. The climate change argument has added a new area for scholarly examination. Policy reviews from PICs reflect a marginal integration of gender into climate migration and relocation in the region. While Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have showcased a complete inclusion of gender in their climate relocation guidelines, none of the other PICs have demonstrated any policy strength in gender provisions. Many of them do not even have dedicated policy arrangements for dealing with climate migration. The review of empirical cases shows a lack of clear gender agenda in the local relocation planning. Although livelihood and infrastructure aspects exhibit some positive gender outcomes, the initiatives were neither targeted nor exclusively designed for women. The paper reiterates the need for an effective gender mainstreaming in both policies and practices. The local relocation plans must include clear gender agendas with targets that could be monitored by a monitoring body. The formation of women’s forums and capacity building exercises are required to encourage women in decision-making. The paper also acknowledges a lack of gender-focused literature in the climate relocation discourse on Oceania, urging more research in the future.
While small fish are increasingly being recognized as an important source of essential nutrients, little is known about how they are utilized and consumed in households. This study aims to fill this gap. We used a cross-sectional survey consisting of 109 households, with 742 individuals, to collect quantitative data on household dietary diversity and fish consumption in three districts of northern Uganda. Additionally, qualitative data on the preparation of small fish were collected through observations and focus group discussions. Contrary to views in mainstream food security discourses, our results show that small fish are accessible and frequently consumed. Overall, 686 of the 742 individuals (92.4
This article reconstructs the rise and declining authority of the theory of inexhaustible sea fisheries from the pre-industrial period to 1945. Taking Britain as the principal case and fisheries and whaling as distinct but comparable systems of marine extraction, it examines how biology, technology, markets, political economy, evidence, and regulation shaped interpretations of marine abundance. Inexhaustibility is treated not as a formal population-dynamic theory, but as an influential proposition that the great offshore food fisheries could not be materially and persistently reduced by contemporary fishing, or that available evidence did not justify general restraint. Industrial expansion complicated this threshold: greater fishing power, distant-water operations, preservation, processing, and imports could sustain landings while obscuring changes in catch rates, size composition, voyage length, and cost. Whaling made regional depletion and geographical relocation more visible because slowly reproducing animals, identifiable grounds, recorded catches, shore stations, and factory ships linked extraction more directly to declining availability. Garstang’s effort-adjusted critique, research associated with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), Hjort’s recruitment analysis, wartime contrasts, and interwar work on growth, mortality, effort, yield, and capacity progressively displaced practical inexhaustibility. By 1945, the scientific and regulatory problem had been reorganised around the conditions and coordination of exploitation.
Small-scale fisheries (SSF) are fundamental to coastal livelihoods worldwide, yet they continue to face persistent governance and management challenges. Because the adoption of responsible fishing practices depends heavily on the strength and functionality of local organizations, understanding how fishing cooperatives operate is essential. This study examines the organizational functionality of fishing cooperatives along the Southern Jalisco Coast (SJC), an understudied region of the Mexican Pacific, and provides the first systematic diagnosis of the area. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines participant observation and in-depth interviews, we assessed cooperatives across key institutional dimensions, including internal regulations and administration, transparency and participation, earnings and social responsibility, economy, infrastructure, and collaboration with external actors. Despite sharing similar ecological and geographical conditions, cooperatives exhibited substantial organizational heterogeneity. While some organizations demonstrated strong social responsibility, effective communication, and productive external partnerships, others faced challenges related to leadership, accountability, economic coordination, and regulatory compliance. Our findings indicate that these differences cannot be explained solely by internal organizational characteristics. Rather, they reflect the interaction of historical trajectories, institutional arrangements, informal norms, and local governance capacities that have shaped the development of fishing organizations over time. These results highlight the importance of incorporating social and organizational dimensions into fisheries management and policy design. We argue that context-sensitive public policies, leadership development, and sustained institutional support are essential for strengthening SSF organizations. More broadly, recognizing and assessing organizational diversity can contribute to more adaptive and effective governance strategies in Mexico and other coastal regions facing similar social and environmental challenges.
This article examines the emergence of collaborative governance within the EU maritime transport sector in response to the European Green Deal (EGD) and its decarbonization agenda. Using a nested case study design, it analyses policy arrangements for shipping and ports, applying a combined analytical framework based on the policy arrangement concept and collaborative governance theory. The findings highlight that while shipping and port sectors have historically operated in siloed arrangements, the EGD has prompted cross-sectoral collaboration through initiatives such as green shipping corridors, alternative fuel infrastructure projects, and stakeholder alliances. Increased collaborative dynamics are evident both within and between these two sectors, fostering trust, alignment, and early joint problem-solving. However, large-scale joint action and fully integrated governance mechanisms remain limited, indicating that the emergent collaborative governance regime is in its formative stage. The study demonstrates how the EGD is reshaping sectoral interactions, providing a foundation for transformative change in maritime transport governance, while highlighting the need for sustained institutionalization, joint investment, and system-level adaptation to realize long-term impact.
This article examines the gendered dynamics of collective action and governance in Chilean small-scale fisheries through the emic category of ayuda (help). In this context, ayuda names more than voluntary collaboration: it refers to a gendered form of work, obligation, and affective availability through which women’s contributions have sustained fishing activity while being recognized mainly as support. Drawing on qualitative, multi-sited feminist research conducted between 2000 and 2024—based on in-depth interviews, participant observation, documentary analysis, and the systematization of organizational experiences—the study reconstructs three historical phases in the gendering of the small-scale fisheries movement: subordination and organizational opening; consolidation and institutional tension; and legal advocacy, regulatory reform, and disputes over representation. The article develops the notion of overflowing the myth of help to analyze how women reworked ayuda from within. Overflowing does not mean an external rupture or the definitive overcoming of gender hierarchies. It describes a situated process through which help was intensified, politicized, and redirected toward demands for labor recognition, organizational authority, territorial defense, and participation in fisheries governance. This process enabled new forms of leadership, collective organization, and institutional advocacy, including women’s participation in the legislative discussion of Law 21.370 and the reform of the Ley de Caletas. The analysis contributes to maritime social sciences and small-scale fisheries governance by showing how agency can emerge from subordinating registers when these are reappropriated as resources for political audibility, representation, and collective action.
This study investigates Filipino seafarers’ engagement in the social media X’s Alter community, an anonymous online platform for sexual expression and connection. Employing ideas such as R.W. Connell’s hegemonic masculinity, social support theory (SST) and cyberqueer theory, it investigates how Filipino seafarers utilize this platform to navigate isolation, loneliness, and emotional stress. Through qualitative analysis of interviews and online interactions, findings of this study showed that Alter community functions as a “digital counter-site” created in response to the hyper-masculine, homosocial environment of the maritime workspace. The ship environment, as a hyper-masculine and homosocial space, valorizes emotional stoicism, physical toughness, and compulsory heterosexuality. Participants thus live a “double-life.” They perform a “straight” maritime persona on board while exploring alternative sexualities online to satisfy emotional and biological needs without compromising their masculine identity. Motivations in creating Alter accounts on X range from curiosity and sexual exploration to emotional intimacy and validation. While this digital community provides an avenue for suppressed desires, it also exposes seafarers to risks such as emotional dependency, exploitation, and psychological distress. Anonymity fosters both freedom and vulnerability in these interactions. The results magnify the need for social media literacy programs tailored to seafarers, promoting safer online engagement. Additionally, this study contributes to understanding the intersection of social media, sexuality, and psychological health in maritime workers.
The Philippines is a marine biodiversity hotspot, home to a vast array of shark and ray species, many of which face conservation challenges. Despite growing recognition that effective and equitable conservation requires engagement with the values, beliefs, and knowledge systems of coastal fishing communities, these remain largely undocumented in Palawan. This study aims to document the cultural significance and perceptions of sharks and rays among coastal communities in Palawan. Fieldwork was conducted through 60 semi-structured interviews with fishers, tourism operators, and key community members across five sites. Findings indicate that while sharks and rays are not considered deities, traditional beliefs permeate contemporary perceptions, including the use of stingray tails for protection against malevolent supernatural beings. Sharks and rays also hold culinary importance, particularly in dishes like ginataan or kinunot, where their meat is cooked in coconut milk. Despite their cultural and practical uses, sharks tended to be perceived negatively, with many respondents expressing fear or strong dislike rooted in intergenerational storytelling and livelihood-related conflicts. This study highlights the complex and multifaceted relationships between coastal communities and elasmobranchs, where these animals are seen through a lens shaped by tradition, fear, and utility. In Palawan, where some coastal community members continue consuming sharks and rays despite existing legal restrictions, integrating values, beliefs, and knowledge from the communities into conservation efforts could lead to more sustainable harvesting practices. By documenting these plural values and knowledge systems, this study takes a necessary step toward their recognition, contributing knowledge that may inform more responsive and locally owned conservation approaches.
The expansion of floating offshore wind in the UK’s Celtic Sea presents a major opportunity to accelerate the low-carbon transition while supporting regional economic development. However, its implementation is unfolding within a fragmented governance landscape, which constrains the development of new governance approaches that can deliver on multiple policy objectives, including net-zero, nature recovery, and economic growth. Fragmentation is a well-documented feature of marine governance systems and is commonly associated with institutional barriers such as path dependency, policy layering, and institutional inertia. However, few studies have examined the underlying causes of these barriers, meaning that resulting recommendations often fail to tackle foundational institutional design issues. Drawing on institutional theory and using a diagnostic analytical approach, this study identifies multiple institutional barriers that hinder the development of floating wind in the Celtic Sea. The barriers are traced to underlying institutional attributes, including those that regulate actor roles and responsibilities, structure social networks, and distribute power and authority. The paper concludes that the governance challenges observed in the UK’s Celtic Sea arise from systemic and synergistic institutional barriers rather than as a result of isolated policy failures. Therefore, overcoming institutional barriers demands a reconfiguration of marine governance arrangements to enhance reflexivity, adaptability, and collaborative learning across governance scales and policy domains. By linking the emergence of institutional barriers to underlying institutional attributes, the paper contributes to the literature on institutional dynamics in marine governance and highlights the need for new marine governance arrangements that can deliver a coordinated and holistic approach to marine policy and support a just and equitable transition to a low-carbon society.
Small-scale fisheries are complex socio-ecological systems shaped by dynamic interactions among biological, social, economic, and cultural factors. The chiton Chiton articulatus, or “cucaracha de mar,” is a culturally and economically important marine resource for coastal communities in Guerrero and Oaxaca, Mexico, yet its socio-ecological system remains poorly documented. This study analyzes the structure and dynamics of C. articulatus harvesting in Acapulco and the Costa Chica region through an integrated approach combining ethnographic methods and semantic network analysis. Narrative interviews with 32 actors, including specialized fishers (cucaracheros), traders, and community members, revealed regional differences in harvesting and commercialization strategies. While Costa Chica operates through specific-order systems, Acapulco features specialized vendor networks with territorial arrangements and tourist-oriented adaptations. Knowledge transmission follows intergenerational family patterns. A network of 13 nodes showed C. articulatus as the most connected and central element. Nodes such as Price, Knowledge, and Use exhibited high betweenness, acting as critical bridges. Three main clusters emerged: Management practices, Socio-environmental, and Final Use. Testimonies of declining populations and smaller specimens raise sustainability concerns, though informal self-regulation practices such as site rotation and size selection were observed. Potential ethnomedicinal uses in Afro-descendant communities of Corralero, Oaxaca, highlight an important biocultural heritage that warrants further investigation. This study offers critical insights into the complexity of traditional marine resource use in data-poor fisheries, informing context-sensitive management strategies that promote ecological sustainability and community wellbeing.
The seabed is essential to the health of marine ecosystems, supporting key species and providing critical ecosystem services. However, human activities exert increasing pressures that degrade and reduce benthic habitats. Protecting sea floor integrity requires ecosystem-based management (EBM) capable of addressing impacts across sectors and national borders. Achieving this is supported by governance arrangements that coordinate actions among government bodies, countries, and administrative levels while aligning sectoral and environmental policies. To enhance seabed management, the EU has introduced threshold values that define acceptable limits of habitat loss and disturbance. In parallel, HELCOM has launched regional cooperation to develop a common approach among Baltic Sea countries to strengthen the protection of benthic habitats. This paper presents findings from a qualitative analysis of these two recent initiatives. The results indicate that the threshold values have the potential to improve the implementation of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive but show also potential limitations of the approach. Likewise, HELCOM’s joint approach may establish a new form of collaborative governance to support Baltic Sea seabed management, but some changes in HELCOM’s practices would allow the approach to reach its full potential. We conclude by outlining how these initiatives, if well-coordinated, can together reinforce governance approaches that address interactions within ecosystems and between ecosystems and society, promote long term adaptive management, and manage multiple spatial and administrative scales that are all key features of successful EBM.
In this paper we delve into the history of fisheries social sciences in Europe. We reflect, on the 30th anniversary of its start date, on the works of the European Social Science Fisheries Network (ESSFiN) and its contribution to the development and integration of social science expertise and research within fisheries management. In the late 1990s, ESSFiN succeeded in plugging the institutional gap, providing an opportunity to demonstrate the extent, breadth and relevance of the social sciences' potential to an understanding of issues in the organisation and governance of marine fisheries in Europe. It helped change the course of fisheries social sciences and became the standard bearer for an applied social approach to fisheries governance and management, and its value to the growing focus on multi-disciplinary research. ESSFiN had long lasting contributions in terms of substantive insights and agendas, capacity building within the marine social sciences and policy impacts, but crucially also potentially offers insights relevant to current and future challenges in the field.
Until the twentieth century, the sea remained largely beyond clearly defined and widely accepted forms of state sovereignty and, consequently, beyond the reach of a coherent and widely applicable legal regime. Nevertheless, the activities of local communities required rules and institutions to manage maritime exploitation, meaning that the sea was far from an empty or ungoverned space. The concentration of settlements along the broad estuaries of northwestern Spain presents a particularly compelling case study, as the convergence of multiple ports within the same maritime space acted as a catalyst for a local process of territorialisation and appropriation of the sea, largely independent of both state structures and international legal debates. This article aims to examine the various models of territorialisation and governance that emerged from conflicts and agreements among coastal communities, highlighting the importance of local entities in generating bottom-up scales of authority at sea.
Aquaculture is a growing sector globally that is often positioned as an important source of revenue and protein. However, as its footprint grows in coastal waters, so too does social conflict in shoreside communities related to competing values, problem definitions, and policy priorities, suggesting the need for more research about preferences for aquaculture development. To meet this need, we conducted a Q method study in the U.S. state of Maine. Our research seeks to understand how diverse values and beliefs about aquaculture produce distinct viewpoints that are often at odds in policy debates about the future of aquaculture development. We designed the study using analysis of news media and interviews and completed the Q sort exercise with forty participants who hold diverse positions on and roles in aquaculture development in Maine. Our analysis revealed five distinct perspectives, each of which centers different values and beliefs about how aquaculture development on Maine’s coast should (or should not) proceed. Our findings suggest many competing priorities among these groups, as well as areas of relative consensus that may serve as starting points for constructive policy dialogue. Findings also highlight the need to differentiate between species and cultivation practices in both discourse and management, rather than treating all species and scales of aquaculture as a homogenous project.
