Marine sense. The Sea beyond Explicit Knowledge

Abstract

AbstractI explore what is known as “marine sense” to highlight the specificity of tacit understandings of the environment in which intuition is pivotal to practical action. I argue that the concept of “marine sense” affords a finer and more nuanced understanding of the ways in which populations interact with marine environments and posit that the fishers’ knowledge is operative because it is coupled with other skills that make it suitable for action and for adopting effective behaviors. Thus “marine sense” and “knowledge” become two distinct forms (or modalities) of understanding the marine environment. I outline what research on “marine sense” could constitute in relation to recent advances on the interactions between humans and oceans in the context of my ethnographic fieldwork among the Wayuu of Manaure (Colombia). I specifically highlight frames of reference that inform how freediving underwater fishers organize their (dialogical) relationship to the sea through perceptions and sensations that are on a general level central to an intuitive understanding of observable events.