The ocean exceeded: Fish, flows and forces

Abstract

The ongoing conceptualisation of oceans and the hydrosphere by Peters and Steinberg is to be welcomed. They continue to challenge geography’s historical tendency to focus on and from terrestrial spaces, exploring how oceans exceed their material, discursive and imagined boundaries along with their liquid form. This short commentary responds specifically to their assertion that ‘The ocean is fish’. Using the example of Atlantic salmon, it questions the directionality at the heart of Peters and Steinberg’s paper. It focuses particularly on the complex spatialities of salmonid life, and the ability of salmon to blur aquatic boundaries. The commentary argues that if oceans exceed, they are also exceeded, whether through the extra-planetary forces that guide salmonid migration and affect tides, or the inward flows of water from rivers. It ends by questioning the space given to non-human life in the more-than-wet ontology, asking how such actants might be implicated in oceanic excess, particularly when the ocean’s intrinsic voluminous excess renders them beyond human awareness or understanding.