Francesca Kathleen Conterno

This project asks how diverse actors positioned across the Global South jointly create geo-economic power through the Pacific Ocean. As a way into the power of the Pacific, I consider fishmeal, an intermediary product created from anchovy and used as feed in the aquaculture industry. Peru and Indonesia both hold claims to ecological abundance directly relevant to fishmeal commodity chains: along the Peruvian coast, anchovy surf the Northern Humboldt Swell, where 20% of worldwide marine catch occurs; and due to its archipelagic makeup, Indonesia has the largest aquaculture potential of any nation on earth. These abundances are realized through geographic circulation: oceanic connection is key to realizing oceanic potential in anchovy stocks (Peru) and archipelagic waterways (Indonesia). Such value realization is also dependent on scarcities posited at global scales: in particular, the worldwide decline in capture fisheries production. Through multi-sited ethnography at key sites of production and exchange, this research project investigates how the interplay of abundance, scarcity, and connection is engaged and negotiated by diverse actors situated along fishmeal commodity chains. In thinking geography, ecology, and capitalism as interlinked phenomena, I ask how futures of economic and ecological relation are envisioned through the Pacific and across the Global South.