Elementality: Confronting Whalers Through the Air and on the Seas

The chapter follows the atmospheric and oceanic activism of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a direct-action environmental organization that works to stop whale poaching in the Southern Ocean and porpoise killing in the Sea of Cortez. The major obstacles—but also the primary enablers—of their work are the elements themselves. Floating, flying, and sailing in pursuit of poachers is made possible by the atmosphere and the ocean's fluid states. This chapter gathers theoretical insights from marine geographers Kimberley Peters and Philip Steinberg to situate Sea Shepherd's use of technologies within the sea's liquidity. The activist drone does not render the ocean's ontology, inhabitants, and politics into objectified abstractions. Rather, focus on conservation technologies shows the challenges of caring for marine species by controlling illegal fishing. In these acts of vigilante enforcement, blue governmentality assumes its limited capacities as compromised by the elements and the vagaries of prosecution.