The question of whether the ocean had memory presented itself to me on the very first afternoon of our discussion in the NAKFI microbiome and biodiversity group. The exact question was: “Does the ocean have memory, and if so, what form does it take”. This then became one of our topics of discussion, and Alyson Santoro and I presented it to the NAKFI community the following morning. The particular connection of memory and the ocean allowed for an open reading frame that appealed to many, and a group of 17 of us found ourselves ideating on it for the next 2 days.
From the very beginning therefore, this has been a transdisciplinary process that allows us to think of the ocean in a complex and dynamic way, with the potential for bringing new intersections between different fields and points of view, enabling new ways of seeing, and hopefully new solutions to our fragile relation to the ocean with which we are inextricably connected.