ABOUT OCEAN MEMORY
the Project
Ocean Memory is a concept born in 2016 at a transdisciplinary conference of the National Academies of Science, Medicine and Engineering devoted to the Mesopelagic (or deep ocean). At that workshop, a group gathered to explore concepts around biodiversity and the microbiome came up with a question:
“Does the ocean have memory, and if so, what form does it take?”
The Ocean Memory Project, born from that early seed, seeks to bring together researchers from across disciplines in science, the humanities and the arts, as well as from diverse cultures, to explore and develop this question through a trans-disciplinary lens.
Our primary modality is to organize thematic workshops in which participants are invited to present and collaborate in a horizontal and open way. These are followed by a funding opportunity meant to support collaborative research across disciplines and cultures to explore and develop ocean memory.
But we are also open to the many possibilities of community collaboration which have brought us to a research cruise in the Salish Sea, the creation of a discussion group on the intersection of ocean memory and the pandemic, a webinar series…
WHat is Ocean Memory?
Ocean Memory could be summarized in this fictional wikipedia:
Ocean Memory: The ability of biological and physical oceanic systems to encode, store, and release information across a variety of timescales, from hourly to geological, impacting the future.
(Predicted Wikipedia entry, 2025)
However, as a concept born at the intersection of disciplines and cultures, it is not one thing but a multitude of intersecting points of view through which humans might attempt to fathom the ocean as a dynamic living thing, capable of exhibiting the kind of feedback processes which in humans lead to memory. Bringing together the concept of Ocean and the concept of Memory is evocative and inspires new areas of inquiry and research.
A common thread may be that we, as a community of researchers, seek to explore this space of meaning, not as a human-centric one, but as a more than human place in which life and agency abound. In this way we seek to learn from the ocean about its past in order to better prepare for our collective future.
Timeline
NAKFI Discovering the Deep Blue Sea Conference
The question is posed in the Biodiversity and Microbiome group: Does the Ocean have memory, and if so, what form does it take?
20 participants develop a presentation of the possibilities.
Our community is expanding. With now over 100 members we come from a broad spectrum of disciplines and cultural backgrounds, from oceanography to neuroscience, to visual art, to theater, to sonification, to history, to philosophy, to journalism.
If you are interested to be part of our community send us an e-mail sharing your story to: community@oceanmemoryproject.org
