European Ocean

(E)valuation processes often have unintended consequences. European ocean researchers find themselves caught in a tight bind between the pressure to produce cutting edge, scientifically excellent research and research critical for ocean futures amidst climate crisis. Changing funding landscapes, oriented increasingly towards short-term projects (Franssen & de Rijcke 2019), are both highly competitive and unable to provide sufficient resources for the forms of long-term observation and monitoring that could improve scientific understandings of the ocean. Although collaborating with industry has become increasingly contentious in recent years, especially in regards to the energy sector, ocean research has a long history of relying on industry and military resources (Oreskes 2021). While most – if not all – the researchers I work with feel uneasy about these connections, they see little alternative. If they can’t obtain resources from anywhere else, and they view the outcomes of their research as critical for the future of the ocean, then what? In their efforts to improve research, then, governance practices can perpetuate the very knowledge gaps they seek to address, weaving individual researchers into a precarious web of accountabilities in the process: to themselves, to their communities, and to the ocean itself.