Fieldwork in our Collective Seabed

This blog post was written by FEELed Lab Research Affiliate Susan Reid, who finished her postdoctoral fellowship at UBCO earlier this year.

This note is an opportunity to report on fieldwork at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), one of several excellent fieldwork activities that formed part of my postdoctoral research. I cannot thank UBCO enough for these unique opportunities.

While not an exclusive focus of my research, for more than a decade I have analysed the legal and critical cultural dimensions of ocean governance, seabed mining and multibeing justice. Travel funds attached to the UBC postdoctoral fellowship enabled me to attend the ISA Assembly sessions in Jamaica to take a closer look at how the physical, political, environmental and local contexts of diplomacy, regime-making, and resistance all interact in real-time. This work also encompassed collaborative, community engagement activities, as discussed below and has informed work such as Multibeing Ocean and the co-authored piece, An Abyssal Conversation.

Attendance at the ISA Assembly sessions was only possible thanks also to the delegate opportunity offered by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), a private art and advocacy foundation. TBA21 has a research arm focussed on artistic and interdisciplinary approaches to marine and ecological issues. On these merits, the foundation was granted Observer status at the ISA in 2017. While they don’t offer financial support, TBA21 offer important Observer access to the ISA as part of their delegation.

Following the ISA’s 2024 Assembly, several of us attending with the TBA21 delegation kept connected and continue collaborating on projects. We co-founded the Deep Currents Collective (DCC) as a collective of transdisciplinary scholars, artists and activists with shared interests in seabed and ocean governance and advocacy. In July, DCC was accredited by the ISA with Observer status. Alongside TBA21, we can amplify diverse cultural voices within ISA’s diplomatic spaces. As well, DCC will contribute critical cultural expertise and platform transdisciplinary, creative, cultural governance approaches at the ISA and beyond. More information on the DCC website.

The ISA is responsible for managing activities in the international seabed–an area covering more than half the planet’s surface and even greater scales of diverse, embodied lifeworlds and relations. It has a dual mandate under the UN’s law of the sea to both advance seabed mining and protect the ocean but has mostly directed attention to the former. Deep seabed mining is highly contested and a growing number of nations support a moratorium. If it proceeds, the first set of exploitation activities will extract polymetallic nodules from the north Pacific ocean floor, which would destroy deep ocean ecologies. The ocean relationships, cultures and livelihood of Pacific communities at the frontline are most at risk from these ecological harms. 

The ISA’s jurisdiction is designated under international law as common heritage of humankind (CHH). Any activities conducted there must benefit all of humankind. This context intensifies issues of participation and privileged access and epistemic and multibeing justice. A key question centres on how the signature concept of CHH is understood and advanced by the ISA and the law of the sea. It is a concept with different meaning for different people. The legal definition remains elusive. For some, CHH is the entire, interconnected ocean as a source and realm of imaginative connection and embodied knowing. Unsurprisingly, pro-mining interests support a concept of CHH as the mineral wealth yielded from the international seabed. Others, including Indigenous and coastal communities, understand CHH as a relationship between humans and the ocean, now and through the past and future–a living kinship connection with the ocean.

With the exception of small Pacific Island Nations, there has been little public outreach instigated by the ISA and member states which engages communities in discussion about their relationships to the deep seabed, the implications of deep seabed mining and the ISA’s governance approach. Though headquartered in Jamaica, the ISA has failed to connect with local communities about its work and the developing mining regime. Given these community engagement gaps, in 2025 DCC co-produced an exhibition and panel discussion “Our Collective Seabed”, in partnership with the National Gallery of Jamaica

As DCC were all members of the TBA21 delegation, the event was registered as an official side event under the flag of TBA21. Our Collective Seabed provided a platform for engaging local communities scholars, artists and ISA delegates in discussion about deep seabed mining beyond the privileged spaces at the ISA.

DCC co-curated a selection of international artists working with seabed mining and extractivism: Hefrani Barnes (Fiji), Patty Chang and David Kelley (USA), Emma Critchley (UK), Enar de Dios Rodriguez (Spain), Orchestras from Awe/dacity (seven ocean citizens) and Jonathan Galka’s Insurgent Seabed Archive. These were presented alongside the National Gallery of Jamaica’s curated selection of works from their collection which explore impacts of extractivism on local communities–works by Nadia Huggins (Trinidad and Tobago), Colin Garland, Albert Huie, Archie Lindo and Barrington Watson (Jamaica).

The panel comprised DCC members, Alex Moore-Minott, an activist and spiritual leader from the Maroon community and marine biologist Robyn Young. Our discussion drew a diverse and engaged audience of local community members and ISA state delegates and dignitaries.

As well, in collaboration with Fijian artist Hefrani Barnes, DCC produced and distributed a collection of postcards at the ISA and at the exhibition.

DCC received event support from the National Gallery of Jamaica (venue and curatorial partnership) and the University of Southampton (event costs including printing event flyers and postcards).