2020 年 21 巻 1 号 p. 457-491
In the context of the climate crisis, seawater scaling reveals the precarity of the ocean. Yet scaling as a process of knowledge production in ocean science unavoidably allows us to overlook the representation of complicated local biophysical relationships by using universalized measurements. Based on observations I made with a team of marine physiologists who investigate the effects of ocean acidification on mollusks, this paper shows practices of knowledge production about ocean precarity in Japan. By describing human-nonhuman entanglements that emerge in ecological disturbances, I demonstrate relational contestation over the measurement of unevenly distributed biosocial vulnerabilities. The sometimes unexpected interactions of sessile organisms, measurement devices, and marine physiologists with mollusks show complex processes of encounter rather than stylized biophysical representations. Recognizing the material semiotics of ocean acidification, in which chemical compounds, biological organisms, hydrological and geomorphological parameters, and other "things" become entangled, allows us to go beyond scalable metrics to understand the Ocean as a precarious place.
