Assembling the sea: materiality,movement and regulatory practices in the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery

Introduction

In 2008, a series of actants, events, practices and processes came together to focus attention on the environmental and economic health of Cardigan Bay, Wales. Long renowned for its spectacular coastline and, especially, for its population of bottlenose dolphins, part of the Bay had been designated a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) in 2004. But it was reported in 2008 that the Bay was under ‘threat’ from three activities: proposed exploration for oil and gas; potential development of an offshore windfarm; and ‘scallop boat dredges [which in 2006] were allowed to reduce seabed … to a featureless desert of mud and sand’. ¹ While concerns remain about the potential impacts of energy developments, it is the continued impact of scallop dredging that has caused the most vocal concern, and which has resulted in formal campaigns to end the practice. ²

The controversy surrounding the scallop fishery has developed less for its impact on scallops themselves than for: 1) the influence of fishing practices and technologies on bottlenose dolphin habitat; 2) the changing form and increasing capacity of fishing technologies; and 3) the changing provenance of the fishermen, who increasingly come from outside Cardigan Bay or Wales. This is not simply a story of humans impacting negatively on an endangered fish stock, though this theme is not insignificant. Beyond this, it is a story of the changing practices of heterogeneous actants – scallops, fishermen, dolphins, the sea and seabed, fishing technologies – in the co-production of ‘the scallop fishery’.

Further, while much of the debate centres on the physical area of Cardigan Bay, the practices of humans, animals and technologies within the Bay frequently are co-produced by events and actions further afield. New management regulations for scallop fisheries in the west of Scotland and south of England, for instance, have displaced fishing activity from these areas to the seas off Wales. In turn, this increased fishing activity affects the behaviour and movement of other actants, such as dolphins, whose prey species are affected by dredging practices. Through examining such issues, this paper is also about the different spatialities of the Cardigan Bay fishery; while the harvesting occurs in this place, it is in part driven by, and itself influences, actions elsewhere, making a topological approach to its conceptualization desirable.

Through further exploration of the scallop fishery and the debates around it, this paper addresses two central themes. The first of these is empirical in nature and relates to the comparative lack of attention paid by cultural geographers to the sea. This has been remarked on elsewhere, ³ but little research effort has yet to follow; Connery’s identification of a ‘scholarly turn to the ocean’ ⁴ seems premature. In spite of recent work in political ⁵ and historical ⁶ geography, geographers in the main continue to treat the sea as a feature to be crossed, or as a space of the unknown, ignoring the variety of life and activity that exists within it:

The sea is presented as a space ‘outside’ society, a friction-free surface increasingly made obsolete (or at least suitable for being ignored) thanks to air travel and seamless container transport. The sea is presented as an abstract point on a grid, to be developed. The sea is presented as a repository of fragile, global nature, to be stewarded. Each of these images is accurate, but each is partial. Not only do the images tell partial stories; they obscure the material reality experienced by those who derive their living from the sea’. ⁷

This ‘material reality’ continues to be under examined. Steinberg’s focus on social construction, while attentive to materialities, also leads to a foregrounding of human agency and perspective. More recent work has argued for investigations that engage with the sea as ‘something with a lively and energetic materiality of its own’. ⁸ In spite of this, debate around fish stocks has tended to remain the territory of economics and politics, ⁹ with very little work considering the lifeworlds and agency of the fish themselves, ¹⁰ and geography’s animal turn has been little troubled by global concerns around collapsing fish stocks.

The second focus of the paper relates to geographers’ engagement with ‘assemblage’, a concept through which I explore the empirical issues around Cardigan Bay. Geographers are drawing on this notion with increasing frequency, but employ it in a variety of disparate ways, ¹¹ often in the descriptive sense of things coming together, but increasingly influenced by the development of ‘flat ontologies’. ¹² In this paper, I am especially interested in the spatial implications of the concept; following Doel ¹³ and Murdoch, ¹⁴ I present ‘the scallop fishery’ as an assemblage of heterogeneous actants gathering and dispersing, entangling multiple timespaces through practices of territorialization and deterritorialization. In studying fishery-as-assemblage, I foreground not only the heterogeneity of actants involved but especially the emergent spacings and politics of space that develop. In turn, studying the fishery allows me to attend to some of the practical and methodological concerns around assemblage.

Analysing the sea, and the practices that take place on, in and around it, through the figure of the assemblage, offers one route through which to follow Lambert et al.’s call for work on geographies of the sea to consider ‘the relationships between different elements and materials – water, wind, wood, salt, cloth, metal, coal, rope, plastics – and the cultures of nature that combine them within different practices and technologies’. ¹⁵ Understanding sea and fishery as assemblage also leads to the inclusion of actants such as fish and other marine wildlife, and encourages critical focus on the relationships between the stability and/or mobility of these, and the frequent rigidity of the measures and technologies that are designed to manage, protect or exploit them. Doing so may also help to contribute to more holistic approaches to managing seas and fisheries. ¹⁶ This paper furthers ongoing discussions about fisheries management by focusing on the interrelatedness of the heterogeneous actants involved in and around the scallop fishery. Through this, it emphasizes the importance of the sea’s depth and fluid materiality, issues glossed over in much existing work.

I begin the paper by outlining the key features of assemblage, while also noting the conceptual fluidity that surrounds the term, before examining its spatial implications and potential in developing new geographies of the sea. Following this conceptual introduction, I further detail the controversy around Cardigan Bay and its scallop fishery, through the concepts of striation and smoothing, emphasizing emergence, the coming together of heterogeneous actants and the related roles of movement and uncertainty in the way it has played out. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this study for future ‘geographies of assemblage’, and by raising suggestions for future research on cultural geographies of the sea and fisheries. The research reported here draws on an extensive review of documentary sources relating to the designation and management of the Cardigan Bay SAC, and to the regulation of scallop fishing in Wales. ¹⁷

Conceptualizing assemblage

Geographers have increasingly employed the concept of ‘assemblage’ but the diversity of uses to which it has been put has led to considerable conceptual fluidity. Some authors have been highly critical of the multiple and loose interpretations of assemblage. Sassen comments that they are not only ‘disparate’ but ‘sometimes imprecise’, ¹⁸ while Marcus and Saka are critical of a frequent ‘piecemeal appropriation of certain concepts for the remaking of middle-range theorising’. ¹⁹ In this section, I do not intend to police conceptual borders but to draw out some of the key features before moving on to highlight its geographical implications.

The frequent reference to assemblage stems in part from the simplicity of its dictionary definition, though this tends to mask the more complex intentions of its enrolment by various poststructural theorists. On the level of a dictionary definition, the term offers analytical scope, notably in its implication that things come together, socialize, conflict and relate. ²⁰ As such, it helpfully captures the notion of heterogeneous actants coming together, with agency dispersed through emerging processes of co-production. In this way, ‘assemblage’ resonates with a variety of relational approaches, such as Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Deleuzian process-based philosophies. ²¹ The key features of an assemblage, following Deleuze and Guattari, have been drawn out by Bennett:

An assemblage is, first, an ad hoc grouping, a collectivity whose origins are historical and circumstantial, though its contingent status says nothing about its efficacy, which can be quite strong. An assemblage is, second, a living, throbbing grouping whose coherence coexists with energies and countercultures that exceed and confound it. An assemblage is, third, a web with an uneven topography … power is not equally distributed across the assemblage. An assemblage is, fourth, not governed by a central power … An assemblage, finally, is made up of many types of actants. ²²

With regard to the final characteristic, Bennett distinguishes between ‘entities’ ²³ and ‘forces’, ²⁴ different forms of ‘actants’, where the former have ‘sufficient coherence’ to be identifiable and the latter might have ‘great volatility, fast pace of evolution, or minuteness of scale’. ²⁵

Bennett’s characterization shares many similarities with other relational approaches, such as ANT: its decentering of power, composition of heterogeneous actants and the parallels between ‘web’ and ‘network’. Further, her description of assemblage as ‘living’ and ‘throbbing’ relates closely to the processual nature of actor-networks, where ‘[t]ranslation is a process before it is a result’ ²⁶ : there is nothing final or complete about a network, or the translations that led to it; it is emergent.

In spite of these similarities, there are significant differences between these relational approaches. ²⁷ Taking Michel Callon’s seminal study of the relationship between scallops, scientists and fishermen, for instance, his central aim was to trace ‘the capacity of certain actors to get other actors – whether they be human beings, institutions or natural entities – to comply with them’ through ‘a complex web of interrelations’. ²⁸ As such, the fundamental question was over how heterogeneous actants had come together to lead to a particular – albeit potentially temporary – outcome. In such a way, the focus of ANT is often on ‘what is required’, whereas a Deleuzian assemblage approach is more likely to emphasize ‘what is possible’. ²⁹

In other words, while an actor-network approach might favour a forensic examination of a particular event or process, Deleuze and Guattari are more ‘anticipatory’ ³⁰ and concerned with continuing trajectories and future possibilities or becomings. Thus, in the case of the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery, the issue is not only how it has come to be the way it is, but how ongoing flows and trajectories – and the politics associated with these – continue to shape it and present different potentials for its future. Beyond these key features, assemblage has significant spatial connotations, which I now go on to explore.

Geographies of assemblage

In many ways, assemblage, in its Deleuzian sense, is an inherently spatial concept. However, the possibilities and implications of this remain underexplored by geographers. ³¹ Braun sketched a definition of the geographies of assemblage, which ‘stress[es] the making of socionatures whose intricate geographies form tangled webs of different length, density and duration, and whose consequences are experienced differently in different places’. ³² The spatiality implied by Braun’s definition can be extended through Deleuze and Guattari’s closely related concepts of (de)territorialization, and smooth or striated space.

Doel describes smooth space as where ‘points are subordinated to lines, vectors and trajectories … and … these “points” are exappropriated, deterritorialized, and disseminated in such a way that they are hollowed out into an infinite abyss’. ³³ Through this focus on trajectories, smooth space can be viewed as eventful, ³⁴ as moving and as immanent. ³⁵ Striated space, meanwhile, involves the imposition of ‘an overcoding system … according to an abstract diagram that is held in reserve’ ³⁶ – such as a map, but also relating to ‘identity categories’ such as species. ³⁷ Here, there is an explicit spatial politics, as there is no ‘rigid dualism’ between the two spaces, as ‘any composition is always “a mixture” … of smooth and striated space’ and the ‘mapping of the different kinds of space that mix in each assemblage … becomes the major task’. ³⁸ The dynamism and emergent form of such spaces is captured in, and co-produced by, assemblage.

Assemblages are also characterized by concurrent processes of territorialization and deterritorialization. Territorialization is first about the acquisition, definition and reinforcement of spatial boundaries – whether through the networks that help to identify a spatially-defined community group, or through the jurisdictional boundaries of governmental organizations. Territorialization can also refer to ‘non-spatial processes which increase the internal homogeneity of an assemblage’; ³⁹ examples might include apartheid or the designation of particular species as alien. Territorialization, in other words, is implicitly exclusionary. Deterritorializing processes, meanwhile, either destabilize ‘spatial boundaries or [increase] internal heterogeneity’. ⁴⁰ In this way, attempts to striate space, whether through mapping technologies or processes of categorization, can be understood as territorializing, while the composition of smooth space by lines, vectors and trajectories is emblematic of deterritorialization. These processes might involve both humans and nonhumans; indeed, this makes the concept particularly attractive to the study of Cardigan Bay, where the deterritorializing movements of currents, fish and dolphins often work against (or at least impact on) the territorializing impulses of fisheries and ocean management. Assemblages, then, might be characterized by processes of ‘gathering, coherence and dispersion’. ⁴¹

A third extension of Braun’s brief exposition of geographies of assemblage comes through understanding that ‘entities … may be usefully treated as products of historical processes’. ⁴² This relates to Cresswell’s call to re-focus ‘on the vertical aspects of place – the “thereness” of a particular location and locale that is both the product of horizontal flows and a reason for those flows combining precisely there’. ⁴³ He suggests, following Massey, ⁴⁴ that geographers have privileged the study of trajectories across space in theorizing place, rather than ‘accounting for this process’ and examining how ‘flows combine in the way they do, exactly where they do’. ⁴⁵ Assemblage, he contends, offers a conceptual means by which to approach this problem, as it decentres the human individual and destabilizes topographical notions of scale and distance; ⁴⁶ forces of (de)territorialization may come from near or far, be (co-)produced by humans or nonhumans and may involve trajectories from the past or towards the future.

Such scalar blurrings, however, complicate the definition of ‘an’ assemblage. As Marcus and Saka observe, ‘[a]ssemblage … seems structural, an object with the materiality and stability of the classic metaphors of structure, but the intent in its aesthetic uses is precisely to undermine such ideas of structure’. ⁴⁷ Indeed, for DeLanda, assemblage is a contrast to the ‘organismic metaphor’ promoted by sociologists such as Talcott Parsons, epitomized by ‘relations of interiority: the component parts are constituted by the very relations they have to other parts in the whole’. ⁴⁸ In contrast, assemblages are ‘wholes characterised by relations of exteriority’, whereby ‘the properties of the component parts can never explain the relations which constitute a whole’. This might be summed up as the difference between a totality (the former) and an assemblage (the latter). ⁴⁹

Edensor ⁵⁰ has taken a spatial lens to these issues of interiority and exteriority. Following DeLanda ⁵¹ and Thrift, ⁵² he demonstrates that in assemblage theory, the characteristics of entities are not ‘solely delineated by their relationalities with the other constituent elements’. Rather, ‘circulations occur within and around place as well as between particular spaces’. An assemblage, then, can be disrupted by external influences; ⁵³ relationalities are not always ‘systemic’ but can be ‘accidental, contingent and situational’. ⁵⁴ This emphasis is important and in itself helps to distinguish Deleuzian assemblages from actor-networks; assemblage implies ‘a greater conceptual openness to the unexpected’. ⁵⁵ However, it is also conceptually awkward to refer to certain agencies as coming ‘from outside an assemblage’, ⁵⁶ as assemblages are always becoming, always emergent. In other words, external forces do not act on assemblages, but new trajectories and (dis)connections allow them to take on new forms and characteristics.

I have shown here that ‘assemblage’, through its stress on (de)territorialization, relations of exteriority and spatiotemporality, has specific qualities that deserve greater and closer attention from geographers. The concept assists in understanding how heterogeneous actants come to act together or apart, breaking down Euclidean notions of scale and highlighting the emergent form and eventfulness of place. As such, it is particularly appealing for the examination of recent events in and around Cardigan Bay, which have come about through the flows of heterogeneous actants and forces, ⁵⁷ which themselves have affected the material composition of the Bay and its fishery.

I take these ideas forward through the remainder of the paper, initially by focusing on practices of territorialization in the management of Cardigan Bay, prior to examining the role of movement and emergence in contesting management striations.

Cardigan Bay and its scallop fishery: regulatory practices and territorialization

Encompassing the Irish Sea between Bardsey Island (to the north, in Gwynedd) and Strumble Head (to the south, in Pembrokeshire), the area popularly known as Cardigan Bay is around 60 miles wide across its westernmost point, and reaches depths of around 50 metres. ⁵⁸ It is increasingly promoted to tourists for its diversity of wildlife, with an economy developing around dolphin-watching trips, alongside opportunities for surfing, diving and sea-kayaking. Looking out from the coast, there is little evidence of any boundary or division in the sea, an open expanse stretching to the horizon, broken only by the occasional boat. Here, the sea appears as Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘archetype of smooth space’. ⁵⁹ However, they contend that the sea is ‘also the archetype of all striations of smooth space’, arguing that it was the sea where ‘smooth space was first subjugated’; ⁶⁰ a space composed of currents, flows and trajectories, but increasingly charted and divided for navigation and imperial expansion ⁶¹ or for practices of neoliberalization. ⁶² Indeed, the multitude of activities and actants within the Bay has led to various striations that have attempted to classify species and constitute appropriate behaviour. This section offers background to Cardigan Bay and its scallop fishery and, through this, begins to explore some of the often-overlapping spatialities that emerge through territorializing practices of striation.

The diversity – and relative rarity – of the wildlife found in Cardigan Bay has received official recognition, most notably through the designation of a large portion of the Bay as an SAC (see Figure 1). SACs are established through the EC’s Habitats Directive and are intended to maintain or restore ‘habitats and species of European importance to a Favourable Conservation Status’. ⁶³ The SAC itself ‘extends from its northern boundary of Aberarth, Ceredigion to Ceibwr Bay, Pembrokeshire’, extending ‘approximately twelve miles offshore’. ⁶⁴ Beyond this intrinsically spatial striation, further boundaries have also been placed around the identities of particular actants, through their classification into species categories, and through decisions about which to protect, leading to practices of inclusion and exclusion. ⁶⁵ As originally proposed in 1996, and adopted in 2001, ⁶⁶ the SAC Management Scheme was designed to protect the Bay‘s population of bottlenose dolphins. However, the European Commission required that the UK Government made ‘improvements’ to the list of candidate SACs, which resulted in the Countryside Council for Wales adding three further species (Atlantic grey seals, river lamprey and sea lamprey) and three new habitats (reefs, submerged sandbanks and sea lamprey). ⁶⁷ The Cardigan Bay SAC was formally designated in December 2004. ⁶⁸

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Figure 1.

Boundaries of Cardigan Bay SAC ⁶⁹

Much of the debate around the SAC has concerned its relationship with practices of scallop fishing. Despite the recent turn to tourism, commercial sea fishing retains an importance in the area. This has undergone dramatic change over the past decades, especially in the scallop fishery. Scallops are shellfish, largely sedentary in their adult lives and found on the seabed. Worldwide production stands at around two million tonnes per year, although aquaculture accounts for around 80 percent of this figure. ⁷⁰ There are around 40 species of scallop that are caught or cultivated commercially, but the UK’s production is dominated by king and queen scallops. The UK produced and harvested 20,700 tonnes of king scallops in 2005, with a first sales value of £32.7m. ⁷¹ Cardigan Bay’s scallop fishery was, until 1980, almost negligible in terms of economic value and relative to catches in other fisheries. At this time,

the discovery of dense beds of scallops led to a pulse fishery in the early summer of that year. Around 70 vessels were attracted to these grounds from around the UK, and over 1000 tonnes … of scallops were landed. The stock density was subsequently reduced to a level where fishing ceased to be viable and landings in subsequent years returned to a low level. ⁷²

In 2000, catches in Cardigan Bay increased to 300 tonnes and rose further, suddenly and dramatically, to 3500 tonnes in 2008, ⁷³ following the closure of other scallop fisheries around the UK and the subsequent displacement of fishing vessels. A relatively small-scale local industry through much of its history, the number of boats fishing for scallops in Wales as a whole grew from 14 in 2005 to 78 in 2008 (the number of vessels from outside Wales growing from eight to 60 over this period). ⁷⁴ By 2008, the Cardigan Bay fishery represented 30 percent of the total scallop catch for England and Wales and, for the 2008–9 season, was worth £1.26m to Welsh vessels and £5.1m to vessels from the rest of the UK. ⁷⁵

The regulatory framework that has developed around the scallop fishery places further striations on Cardigan Bay and the practices within it. Carried out under the EU Common Fisheries Policy, it is regulated directly by the Welsh Assembly Government in the seas within 12 nautical miles of the coast (i.e. Welsh territorial waters). From 2005–10, this was carried out through the Scallop Fishing (Wales) Order 2005, ⁷⁶ which prevented fishing within Welsh waters between 1 June and 31 October, prevented any boat from towing more than 16 scallop dredges (and no more than eight within three nautical miles of the shore), restricted the size of dredges that could be used and prohibited the carrying of scallops less than 110mm across. The Order was introduced to offer further protection to the scallops, and to tailor the regulation of the fishery to Welsh requirements (this regulation having previously been part of regulation of the Irish Sea as a whole). The temporal striations, in the form of the close season, was an attempt to take account of the scallops’ reproductive cycles, preventing their capture when they are at their most vulnerable (and productive). The spatial restrictions are rather more arbitrary and represent an attempt to limit effort where fishing is most convenient.

As such, in a simple manner, we can begin to see how striation occurs in a variety of ways around the fishery. Most fundamentally, the resultant territorialization is spatial: the area has been popularly and traditionally classified as Cardigan Bay ⁷⁷ and has also been more formally categorized and segmented, sharp boundaries designated on two-dimensional representations. Beyond this, further striations have been imposed on particular actants, whether in the classification of certain fish as scallops or in the differentiation between sizes of scallop in the regulations that are placed around their harvesting. These various practices of territorialization are familiar from many examples of environmental management; the objects of conservation and management are classified and defined, with boundaries placed by key management organizations to conserve and police. However, the boundaries were not seen as entirely successful in these efforts to conserve. In spite of the SAC, scallop fishing has not only continued but grown significantly in the years since its designation. This is perhaps not surprising, given that ‘most of the best scallop beds are within the Cardigan Bay SAC’. ⁷⁸ I argue in the next section that approaching this situation through assemblage theory helps to explain some of the ways in which the management striations have been disrupted. Inviting a more-than-human approach, assemblage theory helps to show how power is dispersed, rather than concentrated in a single organization, instead being played out by a heterogeneity of actants, human and nonhuman, over an uneven topography.

Smoothing, movement and deterritorialization

If human activity within these boundaries can be policed, nonhuman actants may show no similar respect. ⁷⁹ The nonhuman animals with which this paper is especially concerned are bottlenose dolphins and king scallops. While adult scallops are relatively sedentary, larvae can be carried by currents for over a month in some areas. The scallops of Cardigan Bay, though, appear to have remained in the same grounds, enabling a spatially-defined commercial enterprise to develop (see Figure 2). This relatively stable spatiality is complicated by the concurrent deterritorializing practices of other animals and the movement of the seabed, which I explore further in this section.

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Figure 2.

Authorized and restricted areas for scallop dredging in Cardigan Bay 2008–9. © Welsh Assembly Government 2008 ⁸⁰

These deterritorializing practices were highlighted during and after a consultation on the regulation of the fishery in 2009, where the indeterminacy of dolphin populations and seabed morphology combined with movements in and out of Cardigan Bay to considerably complexify the debate. Legislation had been introduced only a few years before, in 2005, in an attempt ‘to limit effort and secure a future fishery’ but this ‘did not go far enough’ as ‘efficiencies in fishing methods and practices’ continued to improve (i.e. dredging markedly increased). ⁸¹ WAG (Welsh Assembly Government) launched a consultation paper in July 2009 that aimed to address perceived deficiencies in the management of scallop fisheries around Wales, leading to ‘a viable and sustainable scallop fishery in Wales’. ⁸² While this consultation aimed for additional regulation of the fishery, its stated aim was to do this in line with the Welsh Fisheries Strategy, in developing an ‘ecosystem based approach’ ⁸³ on the basis of ‘further research’. ⁸⁴ Responses to the consultation highlighted both the need for further research and the difficulties in reaching definitive assessments of the success of new management practices: the Marine Conservation Society welcomed ‘the proposal to carry out further research into the fishery in order to make decisions based on sound scientific evidence and apply the precautionary principle wherever this knowledge is lacking’; ⁸⁵ a scallop fisherman commented that ‘there was a startling lack of science involved in the formation of the Cardigan SAC’; ⁸⁶ others felt that, whatever the basis for new regulations, it would ‘be very difficult to assess … what has and has not been successful’. ⁸⁷ Much of this difficulty stems from the movement and indeterminacy of various nonhumans.

Central here is the seabed itself, which is in a state of constant flux, resulting in considerable debate around the extent to which dredging, or shifts caused by winds and currents, impact on the quality of scallop and dolphin habitat. The implications of the shifting seabed were highlighted by the submission of complaints to the EC at the end of the 2009 season, prompting the WAG to extend the close season to 1 March 2010 to ‘allow sufficient time to gather and process additional scientific information in relation to the features of the SAC’. ⁸⁸ A team from Bangor University completed a survey in December 2009, reporting in January 2010 on sonar and camera studies. The work found ‘no physical traces of scallop dredging’ on the seabed but noted that this was not surprising, given the ‘highly mobile nature of the seabed’. ⁸⁹ It was, then, inconclusive (perhaps not surprising given the time available) about the impact of dredging. A follow-up study claimed, more definitively, ‘that natural processes outweighed the negative effects associated with scallop dredging within this highly dynamic area’. ⁹⁰ Through this, we see a very explicit example of how ‘the texture, the currents and the substance of the water impact[s] contemporary social and cultural uses of’ the sea. ⁹¹ Indeed, part of the uncertainty around the fishery (and ecosystem) results from the character and materiality of the sea. In this example, sand and rocks shifted as a result of the sea’s changing currents, influenced by lunar cycles and changing weather (it is perhaps unfortunate that the Bangor study had to be conducted in winter during ‘five weeks of strong winds’ ⁹² ). Hinz et al. found that the underlying rock was covered by sand and the ecosystem was said to be preferable for ‘short-lived opportunistic species’. ⁹³ The movement of the sea and seabed, therefore, works to smooth the space, both literally and metaphorically. The implications of this are significant. First, of course, the extent to which the seabed is mobile affects its suitability as habitat for different lifeforms. Beyond this, the movement makes it difficult to pin blame for the destruction of scallop and dolphin habitat solely on the dredgers; the sea itself here is a very active participant in the politics of its management. ⁹⁴

Here, then, while some conservationists have attempted to lay blame for the ‘destruction’ of the seabed at the hands of large scallop dredgers, scientific reports have been inconclusive, though have tended to argue that creatures such as scallops are ‘impoverished through natural processes to a greater extent than [through] fishing activities’. ⁹⁵ The blame game is decidedly more-than-human. Politically, this is problematic: as Bennett contends, ‘a theory of vital materialism presents individuals as simply incapable of bearing full responsibility for their effects’ and suggests that a ‘project of identifying … the sources of harmful effects’ is more suitable than a ‘project of blaming’. ⁹⁶ There is a danger here of too easily discounting the harmful effects of humans – and this has distinct potential in the case of the scallop fishery. By reading fishery-as-assemblage, a benefit is in tracing the heterogeneity of causes, across different spatialities and temporalities; while it is potentially easy to locate blame away from the individual, it also encourages a more holistic approach that might more fully interrogate the root of environmental problems, while also acknowledging continued emergence and looking towards potential futures.

Smoothing processes, as previously intimated, are not limited to the movements of the sea and seabed. At the heart of the debate around Cardigan Bay was the presence (and absence) of bottlenose dolphins, which are considerably less sedentary than the scallops. Here again, flow and movement were key issues in debating where and when restrictions should be imposed. It was estimated in 2002 that 213 dolphins were regularly spending time in Cardigan Bay ⁹⁷ and that, in 2006, 138 were in the SAC itself. ⁹⁸ Cardigan Bay is one of only two sites in the UK that are home to significant populations of these creatures (the other being the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland, but the broader ‘status of bottlenose dolphins in British and Irish waters is unknown; worldwide, the species is threatened in some areas by fisheries and net by-catch as well as habitat degradation and other anthropogenic influences’. ⁹⁹ Dolphins have become a central part of the debate around scallop dredging in Cardigan Bay because:

Scallop dredging, through its impacts on seabed structure and species composition, may adversely affect the availability and distribution of dolphin prey species and so have adverse effects on the dolphin population. ¹⁰⁰

The debate, therefore, is not merely about increasing fishing effort directed at a depleted stock. It is about a coming together of heterogeneous actants and their mutual coconstitution of management spaces. Here, the pointillist overtones of fisheries management are coconstituted by the smoothing movements and interactions of these different actants at a specific point in time. Indeed, other species and technologies might also be added to the mix here – lobster fishermen, for instance, have complained that scallop dredges are damaging their fishing equipment. ¹⁰¹ This reading views the controversy as place-based, the trajectories of a variety of actants having converged and collided at specific times, leading to the identification of controversy in Cardigan Bay. Reading the fishery-as-assemblage, however, encourages investigation beyond the site; the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery assemblage, inasmuch as such a thing can be identified, is not located solely in Cardigan Bay, and such cartographic referencing offers little sense of the debate’s multiple spatialities.

The 2009 consultation proposed a variety of new spatial, vessel, technical and gear and effort restrictions, along with new ways of enforcing regulations, the possibility of commissioning further scientific research, the potential for using vessel tracking technologies and the possible adoption of a ‘restrictive permitting scheme’. Following this, the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) submitted advice, noting that the greatest proportion of dolphin diet in the area is composed of demersal species, such as cod, which ‘live close to the seabed and are reliant upon it for food and shelter’, although their advice did note ‘uncertainty’ as to the degree this might be affected by dredging. ¹⁰² One consultation response questioned whether closing the Cardigan Bay SAC for scallop fishing would benefit dolphins in any way, ‘as it is a proven fact there are no dolphins in Cardigan Bay during the winter months’, which largely coincide with the scallop fishing season. ¹⁰³ CCW’s advice also referred to this movement of dolphins away from the Bay at certain times of the year, and on this basis recommended that scallop dredging should not take place in part of Conwy Bay, in north Wales (see Figure 1), as it ‘is regularly used by bottlenose dolphins for feeding and … the dolphins using the area are part of the Cardigan Bay population, and thus a feature of the Cardigan Bay SAC’. ¹⁰⁴ Here we see a particular folding of space, topographically distant areas brought together by the seasonal mobilities of bottlenose dolphins, brought about by their interactions with fish, which have in turn been affected by the technologies and practices of fishermen and the regulations under which they work, themselves also co-produced by the mobility of the sea and seabed. In this situation, topographical distance is of less significance than the trajectories that come to fold space together.

Further spatial foldings took place through the movement of fishermen and their vessels. A key theme of responses to the proposed new spatial restrictions in the Cardigan Bay fishery (and around the rest of Wales) was of effort displacement. The Welsh Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (WFFA), for instance, warned of ‘additional financial and environmental costs through displacement of effort’ that might result from ‘any blanket closure’. ¹⁰⁵ The responses also drew attention to the different forms of displacement that could take place. The WFFA referred to moving effort from one part of the country to another, but others referred to the possibility of ‘pushing small vessels off-shore’, ¹⁰⁶ which another respondent warned could ‘put lives at risk’ if small boats were further ‘from any shelter of the land’. ¹⁰⁷ These particular concerns stemmed from proposed restrictions, involving the closure to dredging of the 0–1nm zone, and limiting access to the 1–3nm zone ‘to vessels which are 10 metres or less overall length’. ¹⁰⁸ These consultees were concerned that fishermen in boats of that size would increasingly go further out to sea in order to pursue the scallops.

Further consultation responses highlight that any impact will not only be on fishermen based in Wales. One respondent commented:

I hope that it is appreciated that the impact of any new measures proposed will be felt a long way from Wales. I also hope that the social and economic benefits which all ‘stakeholders’ bring to their communities wherever they may be, resulting from fishing in Welsh waters, will be seriously considered. ¹⁰⁹

Of course, the fishery at Cardigan Bay has never truly operated in isolation from other fisheries around the UK or the rest of the world, as practices have spread, management has been institutionalized by the State, and those fishing for scallops have fished for other species during scallop close seasons (indeed, the Scallop Association’s response to the 2009 consultation observed that ‘apart from the three full-time scallop vessels, the “Welsh scallop sector” consists of only approx [sic] 12 vessels which pursue the fishery on a part time basis for only about 40 days per year’ ¹¹⁰ ). Such connections became more explicitly significant in 2006. While the sudden growth of catches in 1980 was a result of the discovery of more scallops, the 2008 growth is rooted partly in events topographically distant to Cardigan Bay. Two of these are particularly significant. First, in 2006, a voluntary agreement was reached to close 15sq miles of Lyme Bay, Dorset, to scallop fishing, ¹¹¹ following concerns raised by English Nature that the fishery might damage pink sea fans, ross corals and sunset coral. ¹¹² 60sq miles were formally closed in July 2008. ¹¹³ Second, the Firth of Lorne fishery, on the West of Scotland, was closed in 2007 to protect its SAC, directly impacting on 20 boats (and 40 fishermen).

These two distinct and ostensibly unrelated events, linked only by the focus on scallops, led to the displacement of fishing effort (boats and fishermen) to Wales, and a particular rise in Cardigan Bay; according to O’Brien, 40 boats were displaced from Devon to the Ceredigion and Gwynedd coasts. ¹¹⁴ This displacement was provocatively described in the local press as an ‘invasion’, ¹¹⁵ a sense heightened by reference to ‘large Scottish fishing-boats crewed by low-paid Filipinos’. ¹¹⁶ The notion of neatly striated management space is here again negated by the deterritorializing tendencies of fishing practice and labour. As scallops themselves are relatively sedentary, boats’ movements follow not seasonal migrations around the coast, nor individual creatures, but different regulatory areas. The management of Cardigan Bay, therefore, is partly dependent on the management of fisheries in the south of England and the west of Scotland (to name but two), and its management has a similar effect on other scallop fisheries. Given their largely sedentary nature, the notion of a single UK scallop fishery seems absurd, and the management of discreet populations has considerable logic. Equally, it is impossible to understand scallop fisheries management in relation to a single, bounded space. This is increasingly recognized in discussions around future management approaches, with the Marine Conservation Society’s 2009 consultation response noting the importance of regulating the fisheries around Wales ‘in conjunction with similar measures in the rest of the UK to prevent effort displacement as seen after the closure of Lyme Bay’. ¹¹⁷ The possibility of a UK scallop strategy is currently being investigated, so as to take into account this ‘displacement effect’ of fishery closure orders. ¹¹⁸ According to Seafish, ‘knock on effects on other areas … may cause the effects of closure to be much bigger than originally conceived’. ¹¹⁹ In this example, new, unforeseen influences have come to play; in McFarlane and Anderson’s words, ‘the eruption of something outside an assemblage that disrupts the holding together’. ¹²⁰ In this sense, the siting of ‘the new’ ¹²¹ shifts from Cardigan Bay, resulting from deterritorializing trajectories and reconfiguring the assemblage form.

A considerable focus of the discussion, then, was on the potential impact of new regulations on the future movement of fishing effort. The proposed changes could contribute to the dispersal of fishermen and their vessels from Cardigan Bay. However, similar movements and flows were partly responsible for the consultation itself, and for some of the concerns that had mounted around the strength of the existing regulation, as fishing vessels had been displaced from other areas around the UK coast following the introduction of similar spatial restrictions elsewhere. This helps to demonstrate some of the ways in which the fishery is practiced with reference not only to its history but with concern for its future potentialities. It is managed, encountered and re-formed not only on the basis of what it is, what it was, but also what it could be.

In this way, examining the fishery through the lens of assemblage helps to show the topological nature of fishery regulations. In this particular case, ‘gathering’ was not simply of heterogeneous actants, but developed through the relationship between various scallop fisheries around the UK (and, to extend this further, partly as the result of global demand for scallops). Here, the particular political ecologies of various fisheries led to the displacement of fishing vessels from Devon and Scotland to Cardigan Bay. It is difficult to conceive of far-flung fishery regulations as actants in the same sense as the dolphins, scallops and fishermen of Cardigan Bay. But, following Bennett, ¹²² understanding them as generative forces that have more occasional but nonetheless significant impacts on the Cardigan Bay fishery helps to highlight the topological nature of regulatory systems, which are defined by relations of exteriority. In a similar sense, studying fishery-as- assemblage also emphasizes outward flows – dispersals. As such, management practices in Cardigan Bay impact on fisheries around the rest of Wales and the UK. The gathering and dispersal of actants such as dolphins and demersal fish has a similarly deterritorializing effect and leads to a continually emerging, co-productive relationship between the actants in and around Cardigan Bay and ostensibly distant management spaces and regulatory regimes. In this sense, the legislation passed by the Welsh Government is not simply about Wales and it is clear that the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery is ‘not governed by a central power’. ¹²³ Essentializing a fishery through the spatial boundaries of Cardigan Bay is, therefore, problematic, as the fishery assemblage extends considerably beyond the Bay itself. Governance here is a co-product of mobility, involving both humans and nonhumans.

These topologies correspond to Peters’s call for maritime geographies to engage further with the ‘new mobilities paradigm’. ¹²⁴ She calls for further attention to be paid to the politics of ‘contemporary movements across the oceans’ and to generate greater understandings of how identities are ‘forged and contested across the seas’. Here, I have demonstrated that the engagement with notions of mobility should not be confined to human movements; the ability of dolphins to swim around the coastline, and the extent to which their trajectories collide with those of humans, is central both to the way they live their lives, and to the classification and management of the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery and SAC.

The logical outcome of such relations might be a management policy attuned to the fluid configuration of the fishery’s constituents. However, if an outcome of the debate is identifiable, it is the Scallop Fishing (Wales) (No. 2) Order 2010, which came into force on 1 March 2010. This instituted a new close season from 1 May to 31 October each year, along with various restrictions on engine power (maximum 221kw), a prohibition of dredging within 1nm of the coast, and a prohibition of scallop fishing in the 1–3nm zone unless the boat is less than 10m and has a maximum of six dredges, in the 3–6nm zone unless it is towing no more than eight dredges, and in the 6–12nm zone unless towing no more than 14 dredges ¹²⁵ (see Figure 3). Part of Cardigan Bay was closed to dredging, although dredging in part of the SAC was allowed to continue, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WCDS) responding that it ‘remains concerned and disappointed’ about this. ¹²⁶ Through these new management measures, the Welsh Government has continued to follow a very traditional approach of striation, retaining a focus on fixed boundaries, in spite of the uncertainty around future forces and trajectories. The management response to deterritorializing forces is to further territorialize.

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Figure 3.

Spatial restrictions for scallop dredge fishing in Wales. © Welsh Assembly Government 2009 ¹²⁷

In contrast to the WDCS, the Marine Conservation Society’s response was more positive, referring to the Order as ‘groundbreaking’ and stating that ‘this protection should be afforded to all threatened habitats around the UK’. ¹²⁸ In using this legislation as a model or template for other areas, the MCS points to some ways in which the assemblage might be reconfigured in the future, bringing the management space of the Cardigan Bay SAC into conversation with new forces and actants, unfamiliar trajectories and unforeseen circumstances, through tactics of territorialization (where ‘the scallop’ is essentialized as an ‘ontological identity’ ¹²⁹ ) and deterritorialization (where distance is topological).

Assembling the sea

This paper has, drawing on the notion of assemblage, highlighted the lively geographies of the sea and suggested that it is worthy of attention as considerably more than a space to be crossed or managed-as-resource. A key aim of the paper has been to respond to Peters’s identification of cultural geographers’ lack of engagement with maritime materialities – and especially those that extend below the sea’s surface. ¹³⁰ Specifically, I have shown that debates around the management of a particular fishery are not merely the result of administrative debates and discussions between policy-makers, conservationists and fishermen. Rather, they are co-produced by a heterogeneity of actants and forces, including scallops, water, wind, dolphins, fishermen, fishing technologies, regional, national and international fishing regulations and scientific investigations. Through this study, I have begun to emphasize some of the avenues that future research might explore in greater depth. In this conclusion, I highlight three particular implications: for management practice; for assemblage methodologies; and for cultural geographers’ conceptualization of the sea.

First, the paper has implications for the development of management practices that engage with the fluid and mobile materialities of the sea. As it stands, the Cardigan Bay scallop fishery is a classic example of management-by-striation: boundaries are drawn on maps to determine where certain activities may or may not take place, but the materiality of the space does not necessarily respect the boundaries which are, in many ways, imaginary. As previously noted, though, the role of these boundaries is changing as the relationships between fisheries around the UK are increasingly acknowledged through attempts to develop a UK-wide scallop strategy. Over coming years, this may be an area of further fruitful investigation and theorization. In particular, Thrift has recently discussed the ‘new practices of organising, analysing, displaying, storing, and communicating information’ that are leading towards what he contends is an ontology ‘in construction’. This moves away from ‘the Euclidean model of numbered and angled space produc[ing] a grid over the world’, such as those identified in Cardigan Bay, and involves ‘a redefinition of the world of persons and objects as constituent elements of a mutually constitutive moving “frame”’. ¹³¹ Such frames ‘work with the coming-into-existence as well as that-which-already-exists’. ¹³² Thrift refers to technologies such as ‘informational overlay’ and ‘inhabitable maps’, ¹³³ which increasingly impact on the ways humans move through and make sense of the world. Similar developments are taking place in fisheries management globally, whereby the frames of management are malleable and can respond to the movements and actions of fish, fishermen and other actants. ¹³⁴ While I have highlighted some of the tensions between smooth and striated spaces, these recent technological developments suggest that future work might usefully focus on how such technologies conceptualize movement and behaviour, and how they discipline-through-response.

The second implication, therefore, is methodological. While this paper has drawn exclusively on documentary sources, future research might usefully take this forward through engaging further with the emergent form of assemblages. Used in its Deleuze-Guattarian sense, assemblage emphasizes gathering, heterogeneity and emergence. As Cresswell notes, it also focuses on the ‘vertical aspects of place’ – not merely the fact that flows combine across space but that they do this because of particular histories. ¹³⁵ This emphasis on spatiotemporality makes the concept especially appealing in studying the sea, helping to show that regulations come to be, rather than simply are, but it also offers the challenge of attending to emergence. In this paper, I have shown some of the problems associated with territorializing management practices, which fail to attend to immanent change. An objective for future work is to engage with such change from within the assemblage. As such, there is considerable potential for future projects to beneficially develop multidisciplinary practices that connect with technological possibilities in cultivating new ways of moving beyond striation and engaging with the emergent form of fisheries.

The final central implication is for the way cultural geographers might treat ‘the sea’ in future research. Taking the sea as a spatial focus of research, while empirically potent, may be ontologically problematic. Peters summarizes various justifications for treating the sea as somehow different from terrestrial environments, noting especially its fluid and mobile form. ¹³⁶ Essentializing this space appears to work against the relational and emergent properties of assemblage, although, as Doel notes, a focus on emergence and becoming does not mean that smooth space is ‘simply chaos’; rather, it is ‘a composed chaos, a chaotic variability rendered consistent’. ¹³⁷ The attraction of an assemblage approach is its disregard for classical notions of scale and neatly bounded spaces. In this paper, the sea is not simply water, and the fishery is not simply the relationship between fishermen, fishing boats and scallops; they are instead defined by relations of exteriority, wherein they are not totalities but constantly emerging assemblages. This paper, therefore, works through a very particular conceptualization of the sea, which is not limited to the expanse of water itself, as this is not where all the associations are played out. ¹³⁸ As such, it expands Lambert et al.’s notion of the sea’s ‘energetic materiality’ ¹³⁹ beyond the content and composition of water, arguing that sea can be much more than an expanse of salt water and is difficult to separate from elements, actants and affects that surround and permeate it. By looking at the sea through the lens of assemblage, I have shown some of the ways in which the sea’s materialities and multiple dimensions matter in composition with surface movements and pointillist approaches to management. Such a conceptualization offers an avenue for future research to move beyond the sea as being merely a space to cross, as separate from land and air, and as a space of the unknown.