Elexis Trinity. Completed Data Availability Sketch. (2022).

While historians such as Sabine Höhler and Helen Rozwadowski have traced rich and extensive histories of human interaction with and measurements of the earth’s oceans and seas, they are among a broad and interdisciplinary community of scholars interested in ocean histories, sciences, and technologies who have pointed out that much of what we know today about oceanic places and spaces is derived from the collection, manipulation and representation of acoustic ocean data.

Among the other data resources mentioned in the data indexing and borrowed data sections which inform my own research into the construction of ocean spaces using sound technologies and the interpretive and material significance of human and technological incursions into ocean spaces as a form of knowing and constituting the natural and the technical (a relationship which Stefan Helmreich has rightfully characterized as cyborgian in nature, drawing upon feminist STS scholar Donna Haraway), the fieldnotes, video documentation, interviews and recordings generated in connection with this research seek to contribute both to the scholarly understanding of the research questions with which the project is concerned and to the general public domain as well as relevant accessible, open source digital archive platforms which make non-sensitive source materials for this study available to other researchers, scholars and the public.

Such sources include participatorily created video and sound recordings of select interviews with marine scientists who collect, interpret, manipulate and share acoustic data, curators of marine archives and museums, and footage of visits to underwater museums and infrastructure sites, laboratories/habitats, hotels and other sites, and may be relevant for future research concerned with the construction of environmental problems, approaches to remediation of anthropogenic sound (and other forms of oceanic) pollution, and the making of space and place underwater. Sensitive data which is protected due to security, privacy, or confidentiality concerns (such as unedited transcripts of interviews with naval scientists or representatives of other state agencies or private companies unable to speak on the record about sensitive matters) have not been included.