An art–science approach to bycatch in the Gulf of California shrimp trawling fishery

Abstract

This piece blends prose, poetry, and drawings in a geopoetic approach to bycatch in the Gulf of California shrimp trawling fishery. We briefly communicate some of the ecological effects of the trawling industry and reflect on our collaboration as an art–science practice that draws on our multiple disciplinary backgrounds, one as a geographer-poet and the other as a marine ecologist–visual artist. We present two poems and drawings addressed to specific individuals of bycatch – a Pacific snake-eel and a Shame-faced crab. We focus on specific individual marine bodies as an act of witness to the more-than-human bodies so often the casualties of this fishing practice. The poetic trope of direct address to an individual eel and crab allows us to work from specific embodied encounters as a site of cultural geographic and geopoetic practice. We aim to convey what it feels like to be on a trawler and to allude to geographic concerns implicitly in the poetry and text. We present this to readers as a piece of creative writing and invite them to bring their own interpretations to the text.