INVISEA: Charting the seabed multiple

Underwater nature under pressure

Seabed territories around the world are currently subject to an array of intensifying pressures. While a variety of human activities claim seabed areas, these are also under escalating pressure from factors such as marine heatwaves, pervasive pollution, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss. 

Underlying the capacity to ensure healthy seabed areas are people’s understanding of the value of underwater nature, its environmental condition, and their notions of whether and to what degree it may be exploited without being damaged for future generations. Such understandings are not shaped directly by the physical, chemical, or biological status of an area type, but rather by the knowledges available to people, by the values they hold, and by the voices who are heard and represented.  

Which knowledges and whose voices come to matter in decisions about present and future exploitation of the seabed? How and on what terms is the value of seabed areas determined?

Kelp forests and the deep sea

In INVISEA, we focus on two types of seabed areas that are contested with regard to area use in Norway: kelp forests and areas considered eligible for deep sea mining. Although very different in terms of physical factors and legal status, these are both subject to different sector interests and important in terms of biodiversity and climate mitigation.

Our research questions 

1. How do people know kelp forests and deep seabed areas? 
2. Whose claims and voices carry weight in decisions about these areas, and whose are excluded? 
3. What do different stakeholders and stakeholder groups consider valuable about kelp forests and deep seabed areas – and why? 
4. How can we bring forward the plurality of these stakeholder knowledges and values in ways that are just, transparent, sustainable, and democratically inclusive? 

Our methods

INVISEA is an interdisciplinary project, based in the humanities and social sciences. We use three methodological approaches: document ethnography of the knowledges and values in governance and policy documents, ethnographic research on how different stakeholder groups understand and value seabed areas, and explorations of experimental tools for displaying a plurality of stakeholder knowledges and values.