MOCA - Mapping Ocean Change through Art

Mapping climate-driven changes to the food chains and migration routes of interconnected micro and megafauna marine species, from the UK coastal ocean to the Arctic.

This project will take a creative and participatory-public-engagement approach to mapping the science of climate-driven impacts on marine life in the Arctic and North Atlantic. At micro and macro-scales, and from local to distant impacts, we will connect the science to the history, lived experience, and anticipated consequences for Scottish coastal communities.

Building from biological data on changes in migration routes and food chains (far-ranging fish and close-to-home fisheries; vanishing seabirds; the long memories of bowhead whales; the vast ocean currents, plankton and energyscapes that unite them all), artistic visualisation will emphasise the complex connectedness and scale of changes. Bringing this multi-scale understanding into the public realm through art and creative engagement, we will develop work with communities around the coast.

The project is supported by UKRI and NERC, in partnership with Creative Carbon Scotland, led by marine biologists from Strathclyde University, artist Jennifer Argo, and conducted with impact evaluation guidance from Dr Chris Leakey and Elizabeth Mills of People Ocean Planet.

Stage 1:

Artist Jennifer Argo and marine scientist Dr Neil Banas will host public workshops and facilitate discussions at arts venues and environmental organisations around the Scottish coast, bridging scientific knowledge with the lived experience of communities and people who work in marine coastal environments. We will focus on complex marine dynamics between the Arctic and the UK that are shifting due to climate change, including changing migratory routes, range shifts, and food chains between species, and knock-on societal effects on a local and international basis.

Argo will coordinate informal discussions with coastal community members and people who work in marine and coastal environments, about changes that they have noticed in recent years, and their hopes and concerns for the future in relation to climate change. Photographer Daniel Tulloch will host these interviews, and take candid photographs of people in the marine and coastal environments that they work in to accompany excerpts of their conversations for an online publication, and to go alongside art about shifts to marine dynamics in exhibitions around Climate Beacon venues later in the year.

Stage 2:

Argo will produce artwork based on the marine science data about changes to migration routes, range shifts and changing food chain dynamics due to climate change, and bridge information from the marine biology data models and research, with the lived-experience insights on climate change from the coastal community members, to be exhibited at CCS Climate Beacon venues and other arts / natural science venues and organisations across Scottish coastal regions. Banas and Argo will also facilitate live-streamed panel discussions between marine biologists, historian Alison Cathcart, community members and people who work in marine and coastal environments.