Expanding socioecological justice through photo narratives: An autoethnography of a researcher collaborating with Azorean fishing communities

This autoethnographical analysis explores collaborative attempts to expand normative narratives about fishing communities to serve socioecological justice and alternative socioecological futures for small-scale fishing communities. It challenges normative framing of environmental narratives and investigates how knowledge is pictured and viewed in a world of increasing ocean industrialisation. It explores issues of power within the realm of storytelling. This analysis arises from long term collaborative engagement with fishing communities in the Azores Islands. It focuses on the creation of a photo narrative book that highlights the continuous legacy of relationships between people and the ocean. The book tells stories that frame fishermen and fisherwomen as important participants and leaders who are fighting to maintain sustainably just relationships with a wild ocean. This article explores the co-creation of knowledge and the power of various underlying images to valorise some people and some cultures, while marginalizing others. It answers to calls for more research into the roles of fisheries in cultural heritage, and the concern about marginalization created through the policies of the Blue Economy. • Human-ocean relationships, absent from science and policy, exist in fisher narratives. • Unconscious assumptions determine the meaning of photographs. • Power needs to be considered continuously in co-producing communications. • To challenge hegemony, knowledge production needs to be an enactment between people. • Alternative images can expand socioecological public narratives.