Crafting the Ocean: The Geographies of Environmental World‐Making

ABSTRACT This paper brings cultural and environmental geographies into further conversation by linking theories of crafting and world‐making together, via the lens of the contemporary public aquarium and nascent oceanic geographies. Far from a niche example, the public aquarium—which represents, and in some form aims to replicate (and preserve), the ocean ‘out there’—demonstrates how crafting aims to establish particular connections with environmental worlds amidst change. Drawing on fieldwork from six UK aquariums, both privately run and those with charitable status, the paper unpacks the politics of crafting in the making of aquarium tanks as well as the oceans they represent. Building on interviews with key actors (aquarists, curators, outreach and education officers, managers), visual and discourse analysis of promotional materials (websites, flyers, information boards, documentaries, memoirs, etc.) and ethnographic observations at each site, the paper offers a critical examination of three distinct modes of marine world‐making behind the glass: (1) exploring how water is itself crafted, (2) the crafting of more‐than‐human worlds in the storying of species selection and (3) crafting light in dark, fabricated, ocean worlds. This paper thus enables a deeper understanding of craft and world‐making in the context of the aquarium , also situating this space within broader geographical thought and ocean geographies. Finally, the paper draws together work on aquariums, craft and oceans in excess to argue for renewed attention on analogue worlds. It explicates how, through processes of replication, preservation and remaking, they might hold space for an ocean (and planet) undergoing profound change both now and in the future.