This series of posts builds upon and expand the issues raised in the 2020 special issue of Environment and Society on “Oceans.” Featuring new content as well as additional perspectives from the authors of the special issue.

“For many, the ocean is the epicenter of evolution as well as the ultimate bellwether for the continued vitality of living systems. It is vast, deep, and mysterious, and simultaneously familiar, intimate, and personal… It is also the site of scientific exploration, geopolitical territorialization, Romantic imagination, capitalist extraction, and shifting everyday relations of love, death, and livelihood… The ocean is both an epic backdrop and an active agent in human activities, at times teeming with living beings and at times emptied of all agency. It is at once dangerous and endangered.” Introduction to the Environment and Society Special Issue on Oceans (Jerry Jacka & Amelia Moore).