Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás’ recent book, Capitalism and the Sea, is an ambitious, systematic, and convincing account of the reciprocal impact of capital upon the salt-water world in the past 400 years. The book is at once an important addition to and a referential text for the rising interdisciplinary field of critical maritime studies – a formidable ocean of research spanning histories of maritime colonialism, including piracy, slavery and revolution, macro-economic approaches to capital circulation in the oceans, studies on borders and border crossers, securitisation and state control over maritime spaces, maritime legalities and materialist perspectives on ports, logistics, chokepoints and labour, as well as ethnographies of marine biologists and maritime activists.

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Seaspiracy is a Netflix documentary which raises awareness towards the atrocities committed by the fishing industry towards marine life and laborers at sea. Many influential individuals praised its role in highlighting the effects of seafood consumption, and how the depletion of oceanic waters will make way for irreversible damages towards the earth’s atmosphere. The problem however lies in the lack of solutions provided towards the issues being raised, leaving individuals with one option to counteract the issues being raised, that being veganism, when in reality, such an option does little to counteract the reality of the situation. So, is Seaspiracy truly trying to call for change, or is it nothing more than a propaganda film made by vegan activists?

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Changing seas, whether it be in the form of increased acidification, higher temperatures or its rising level, demand a sea change in human-to-human and interspecies interactions. Whatever measures and countermeasures are put in place to reverse, adapt to and/or mitigate effects of climate change, states will no doubt play an outsized role as the most prominent subjects of international law. Yet there has been an expansion of subjecthood to commercial enterprises (arbitration) and the individual human being (criminal law), and there exists a plethora of actors and networks, connections and flows that transcend borders.

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With various recruitment efforts underway throughout the industry, this paper poses the following question: To what extent was there a place for women in maritime history ? The aim is to dive into the gender gap on women’s participation and their potential roles in an evolving marine and maritime industry.

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In light of the recent Pandora Paper leak, this essay aims to examine the rise and potential fall of the offshore world. Previous literature examines several definitions and classifications of the offshore world as a geographical location, an imaginary legal realm, and as a process for the advancement of class interest. This paper considers the different characterizations and distinctions of this hidden world, through an examination of the history of its rise in relation to the sea and colonialism, and offers insights into the transformation of state relations through the lens of global connectivity and finance.

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One thing I have learned over my years of working on Mediterranean mobilities is that one cannot enter into a discussion on these issues and expect to remain uncontaminated; certainly not in a conference-like context, where debate and discussion not only have moments of magic but—we hope—also move into uncomfortable or critical terrains.

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The Floating Laboratory Of Action and Theory at Sea that was launched in summer 2018 on the island of Lesvos, Northeastern Aegean, Greece posed this question among many others. The emergence of FLOATS during a period of growing interest among social scientists in ocean, seawater, flows, and tides called for an interdisciplinary approach and prompted us to reconsider common and (un)common topics from another perspective. As an anthropologist of kinship my perspective is often related to soil, blood, descent, alliance, siblinghood, family, household, spiritual affinity, exchanges of goods (bridewealth, dowry, inheritance), substances (milk, blood, sperm, oocyte womb), and names. How could sea encounters motivate an anthropologist with these interests to reconsider her perspective?

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Since 2011, the Forensic Oceanography project which I co-founded with Charles Heller has critically investigated the militarised border regime imposed by European states across the Mediterranean Sea, analysing the political, spatial and aesthetic conditions that have led to large-scale deaths of migrants over the last 30 years.

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Islands have long provided the setting for imagined utopias, as in Ibn Tufail’s 12th century tale Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Thomas More’s Utopia of 1516. But the island of Lesvos could be described neither as a “utopia”, from the Greek “no” and “place” nor a “eutopia”, from the Greek “good” and “place”.

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How do human encounters and experiences with the sea relate to the articulation of utopias and vice versa? The main aim of the workshop was to think in tandem the embracing vastness of the sea upon the planet and the necessary limitlessness of imagining better futures for all creatures upon it.

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