Seadrones: Sensing Oceancultures | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 1, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2632-2463
  • E-ISSN: 2632-2471

Abstract

Drones are airborne sensing technologies that transform how we see from above and respond to crises on the ground. Nowhere does the drone revolution have more potential applications than in Australia’s ocean sciences. Drones give oceanographers fast, safe, mobile, high-definition and affordable ways of seeing, identifying and monitoring endangered marine species such as sharks, whales and corals. They are used in Australia to document the rate of coral death in the Great Barrier Reef, the health of humpback whales and the presence of great white sharks near swimmers. However, scientific data collected by drones has, thus far, failed to translate into effective environmental policy. Understanding how seeing informs science – and why or why not science influences policy – has serious consequences for how Australia’s oceans are sustainably managed. This is not only important for the survival of marine species but also renovates central debates about sensing and political action within science and technology studies. I will briefly outline a research agenda that would hope to make contributions to the seeing and management of the sea and advance our knowledge of seacultures – the convergence of the sea and the culture.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00012_1
2020-07-01
2024-04-25
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Allen, A.. ( 2018;), ‘ Drone market worth $127b. ’, https://www.cips.org/supply-management/news/2018/may/drone-market-worth-127bn/. Accessed 20 June 2020.
  2. Anderson, C.. ( 2012), Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, New York:: Crown Business;.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Benson, E.. ( 2008;), ‘ The wired wilderness: Electronic surveillance and environmental values in wildlife biology. ’, Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, MA:: Massachusetts Institute of Technology;.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Braverman, I.. ( 2014;), ‘ Conservation without nature: The trouble with in situ versus ex situ conservation. ’, Geoforum, 51, January, pp. 4757.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Daston, L., and Galison, P.. ( 1992;), ‘ The image of objectivity. ’, Representations, 1:40, pp. 81128.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Deleuze, G.. ( 1990;), ‘ Postscript on the societies of control. ’, October, 59, Winter, pp. 37.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Fish, A.. ( 2017), Technoliberalism and the End of Participatory Culture in the United States, London:: Palgrave Macmillan;.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Fish, A.. ( 2019;), ‘ Drones at the edge of naturecultures. ’, Media Fields Journal, 14, http://mediafieldsjournal.org/drones-at-the-edge/2019/6/24/drones-at-the-edge-of-naturecultures.html. Accessed 20 July 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Fish, A. R., and Garrett, B. L.. ( 2019;), ‘ Resurrection from bunkers and data centers. ’, Culture Machine, 18, https://culturemachine.net/vol-18-the-nature-of-data-centers/resurrection-from-bunkers/. Accessed 20 July 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Fish, A. R.,, Garrett, B. L., and Case, O.. ( 2017a;), ‘ Drones caught in the net. ’, Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Images Studies, 8:2, pp. 7479.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Fish, A. R.,, Garrett, B. L., and Case, O.. ( 2017b;), ‘ Extended flight: The emergence of drone sovereignty. ’, InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture, 27, https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/extended-flight-the-emergence-of-drone-sovereignty/. Accessed 20 July 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Foucault, M.. ( 2006), Society Must Be Defended, New York:: Picador;.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Haraway, D.. ( 2003), The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago, IL:: Prickly Paradigm Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Helmreich, S.. ( 2009;), ‘ Intimate sensing. ’, in S. Turkle. (ed.), Simulation and Its Discontents, Cambridge, MA:: The MIT Press;, pp. 12950.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Jackman, A. H.. ( 2016;), ‘ Rhetorics of possibility and inevitability in commercial drone tradescapes. ’, Geographica Helvetica, 71:1, pp. 16.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Jasanoff, S.,, Markle, G. E.,, Petersen, J. C., and Pinch, T.. (eds) ( 1995), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Thousand Oaks, CA:: Sage;.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Johnston, D.. ( 2019;), ‘ Unoccupied aircraft systems in marine science and conservation. ’, Annual Review of Marine Science, 11:1, pp. 43963.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Kaminski, M. E.. ( 2013;), ‘ Drone federalism: Civilian drones and the things they carry. ’, California Law Review, 4:57, pp. 5774.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Kirksey, E.. ( 2015), Emergent Ecologies, Durham:: Duke University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Kiszka, J. J.,, Mourier, J.,, Gastrich, K., and Heithaus, M. R.. ( 2016;), ‘ Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to investigate shark and ray densities in a shallow coral lagoon. ’, Marine Ecology Progress Series, 560, pp. 23742.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Klauser, F., and Pedrozo, S.. ( 2017;), ‘ Big data from the sky: Popular perception of private drones in Switzerland. ’, Geographica Helvetica, 72:2, pp. 23139.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Latour, B.. ( 1993), We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge, MA:: Harvard University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Lundstrum, E.. ( 2014;), ‘ Green militarization: Anti-poaching efforts and the spatial contours of Kruger National Park. ’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104:4, pp. 81632.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Mackenzie, A., and Muster, A.. ( 2019;), ‘ Platform seeing: Image ensembles and their invisualities. ’, Theory, Culture, and Society, 36:5, pp. 322, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419847508.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. McShane, K.. ( 2007;), ‘ Why environmental ethics shouldn’t give up on intrinsic value. ’, Environmental Ethics, 29:1, pp. 4361.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Nussbaum, M.. ( 2006), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership, Cambridge, MA:: Harvard University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Parks, L.. ( 2005), Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual, Durham:: Duke University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Pirotta, V.,, Smith, A.,, Ostrowski, M.,, Russell, D.,, Jonsen, I. D.,, Grech, A., and Harcourt, R.. ( 2017;), ‘ An economical custom-built drone for assessing whale health. ’, Frontiers for Marine Science, 4:425, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2017.00425/full. Accessed 20 July 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Plumwood, V.. ( 1996;), ‘ Androcentrism and anthrocentrism: Parallels and politics. ’, Ethics and the Environment, 1:2, pp. 11952.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Radjawali, I., and Pye, O.. ( 2015;), ‘ Drones for justice: Inclusive technology and river-related actions research along the Kapuas. ’, Geographica Helvetica, 72:1, pp. 1727.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Sandbrook, C.. ( 2015;), ‘ The social implications of using drones for biodiversity conservation. ’, Ambio, 44:S4, pp. 63647.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Shaw, I.. ( 2017;), ‘ The great war of enclosure: Securing the skies. ’, Antipode, 49:4, pp. 883906.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Shaxon, L.. ( 2005;), ‘ Is your evidence robust enough? Questions for policy makers and practitioners. ’, Evidence and Policy, 1:1, pp. 10111.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Traweek, S.. ( 1992), Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists, Cambridge, MA:: Harvard University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Tsing, A. L.. ( 2015), The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton:: Princeton University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. van Dooren, T., and Bird Rose, D.. ( 2017;), ‘ Keeping faith with the dead: Mourning and de-extinction. ’, Australian Zoologist, 38:3, pp. 37578.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Verma, A.,, van der Wal, R., and Fischer, A.. ( 2016;), ‘ Imagining wildlife: New technologies and animal censuses, maps and museums. ’, Geoforum, 75, October, pp. 7586.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Verran, H.. ( 2015;), ‘ Governance and land management fires understanding objects of governance as expressing an ethics of dissensus. ’, Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts, 15, pp. 5259.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Vertesi, J.. ( 2015), Seeing Like a Rover, Chicago, IL:: University of Chicago Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Voyer, M. G.,, Quirk, A. M., and Azmi, K.. ( 2018;), ‘ Shades of blue: What do competing interpretations of the blue economy mean for oceans governance?. ’, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 20:5, pp. 595616.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Worrell, R., and Appleby, M. C.. ( 2000;), ‘ Stewardship of natural resources: Definition, ethical and practical aspects. ’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 12:3, pp. 26377.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Youatt, R.. ( 2008;), ‘ Counting species: Biopower and the global biodiversity census. ’, Environmental Values, 17:3, pp. 393417.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Fish, Adam. ( 2020;), ‘ Seadrones: Sensing Oceancultures. ’, Journal of Environmental Media, 1:2, pp. 139144, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00012_1
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/jem_00012_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error