Kate Johnston

In this paper I challenge the practices and extend the concept of traceability. I draw on the research practice of ‘following’ advocated by Cook et. al, and 'follow' a tin of sustainable tuna along its material and discursive makings to reveal a disjunct between the people, places, technologies that form part of the sustainability narrative – Maldives, pole and line, skipjack - and the forgotten places, people, ecosystems and material things that contribute, nonetheless to a tin of tuna, such as the tin itself. These sustainability narratives obscure, what Val Plumwood calls the “unrecognised, shadow places that provide our material and ecological support, most of which in a global market are likely to elude our knowledge and responsibility”. Rather than undermine the sustainability movement with its emphasis on traceability my aim is to extend this traceability to the “unrecognised” places and return to an integrative concept of sustainability where cultural and social complexities, diverse geographical and geological places, ecosystems, and material things can be considered as important components in assessing and classifying the sustainability of a food thing.

This two day intensive walk-shop/workshop offers an opportunity to engage with some of the invisible aspects of Sydney Harbour. From the microscopic underworld to the often-obscured cultural layers, we will consider place in new ways. On day one we will walk along the Blackwattle Bay foreshore, stopping, observing, questioning, listening and considering the many speculative layers coalescing in Sydney Harbour—ecological, cultural, economic and political. We will hear from experts from diverse disciplines (marine biology, humanities, fine arts), industries (fisheries), and Indigenous knowledge holders of the harbour.

Sustaining the Seas is an exciting and experimental refereed international conference that will bring together academics of many disciplines, practitioners, urban planners, artists and writers to consider over three days the challenges of how to care better for the oceans, fish and marine ecological systems. We all have tacit relationships with and dependence on the oceans. " Fish-as-food recalibrates the extent to which anyone can choose to opt out of dominant food regimes by saying, 'I don't eat fish'. As it stands, we all eat fish albeit often in circuitous ways " (Probyn, Eating the Ocean). One of the greatest contemporary challenges is how to eat the oceans better and fairer: for fish, fishers, and their aquatic ecosystems. Sustaining the seas is one of the most pressing global challenges for the planet and all her inhabitants. How to do justice to this challenge is an exigency for all scholars, and how to represent the oceans is a guiding theme in the conference that will be addressed by scholars, artists, and practitioners. We assume that understanding complexity, including social, cultural, ecological and economic interconnections, is crucial to any solution. Hosted by the Sustainable Fish Lab at the University of Sydney, the conference will take place in one of the world's most beautiful yet troubled harbour cities. This will be a unique opportunity to engage with local and global oceanic complexities through panel discussions, keynote speakers, films, demonstrations of innovative practice, and fieldtrips. We welcome proposals on these topics and many more: • Fish markets: including anthropological, cultural studies, tourism, geographical, and economical perspectives; • Regulation of the high seas and the Law of the Sea;; queer fish; • New forms of aquaculture and integrated marine tropic relationships; • Global ocean grabbing, piracy, IUU. • Methodologies, multidisciplinary and multimedia forms of representation. Please send a 250-300 word abstract and affiliation details to kate.johnston@sydney.edu.au by 14th July 2017.

A partnership between the University of Sydney and Taronga Conservation Society Australia. The project aims to develop and implement an integrated tool to evaluate conservation programs. The main research challenges and interests include: Interdisciplinary research methods and practice; conservation frameworks; socio-cultural aspects of conservation work; and theoretical framework for sustainability.

Phase 1 (2017)
The pilot research project - "A Holistic Model of Measuring the Impact of Taronga Conservation Programs" - took place from May to December 2017 as a joint venture between Taronga Conservation Society Australia  and The University of Sydney.

The project responded to a need identified by Taronga to evaluate its conservation work through an integrated framework.

Two pilot case studies were used: a "breed for release" program (Regent Honeyeater) and a "field conservation Partnership" (habitat restoration for the Cassowary).

The central aim of the pilot study was to develop and assess the feasibility of holistic tool, which reflected the socio-cultural, economic, and ecological areas that contribute to conservation work.

One of the key challenges that the pilot project addressed was what kinds of ecological, economic and socio-cultural indicators could be written into an integrative tool?

Outcome: pilot "integrative" tool.

Phase 2 (2018)
Trial the implementation of the pilot tool on the 'breed for release' program (Regent Honeyeater).

How might we better care for, and with, harbours? What modes of disciplinary and transdisciplinary practice, within and outside academia,
including art and activism, might best support this care-work? These were driving questions for the creation of the Speculative Harbouring experimental field guide over a two day postgraduate walkshop/workshop at Blackwattle Bay. By rendering visible practices of care (or lack of care), as well as critically questioning future re-development¹ of the area, the workshop created space to engage with the less cared and designed for aspects of Sydney Harbour - from the microscopic underworld to the often obscured cultural layers. It also created space to engage with the impending re-development of the area.

Field guides have historically been used as tools for noticing. The genre of the field guide² emerged in the 19th century as city guides to help travellers find their way around. These travel guides subsequently morphed into naturalist field guides for identifying natural phenomena, and then more experimental forms³ in the 21st Century. We loosely employed, and critiqued, this genre to question privileged perspectives, modes of classification and ways of sensing to encourage a reflection on how one comes to notice and care. Each participant was invited to draw on their disciplinary expertise and share a method for observing matters of care⁴ in Blackwattle Bay. Participants critically reflected upon their disciplinary fields.

In bringing together a range of perspectives—a somewhat messy⁵ jumble
of questions, activities, images and ideas—we hope to emphasise the
partiality of noticing, and always already situated modes of caring. The
speculative harbouring guide therefore becomes less a mechanism for
identification and sorting, and more a tool for questioning how and what
we notice, how we attend to places, people and more-than-human entities. In the workshop, it was a means for asking what disciplines, ideologies and politics inform our practices in the field. In its manifestation as a physical, shared guide, our hope is that it engages others in practices of learning to ask, and speculate on, important questions that may encourage better care for, and with, Blackwattle Bay and other harbours.

Full field guide available on request.