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Almost three thousand islanders live on eighteen islands off the west coast of Ireland. While many of these islands are dependent on a small-scale fishing industry for survival, their fishing communities face challenges in navigating complex fisheries governance systems at local, regional, national and EU scales. Between 2018 and 2020, I engaged with Irish island fishing communities, the fishing industry and the policy environment in interrogating the political and institutional challenges faced by island fishing communities and their initiatives to manage island fisheries on a collective, seasonal basis. This collection of found poems emerged accidentally while I was analysing and writing up the research. As such, they are an unintended contribution to experimental geographies and join the recent resurgence in creative and arts-based work by geographers and social scientists. Created from the interview transcripts of research participants, the poems provide a snapshot of the complexity of the issues at play during the research period. They highlight the multiple storylines that jostle for space and visibility in the fisheries governance context. The mosaic of voices demonstrate that contestation and contradictions exist and play out not just between islanders and non-islanders, but between islanders themselves, often with no resolution. By allowing for a multiplicity of meanings to co-exist, my hope is that this collection of found poems will disturb the fixed narratives amongst those who are engaged in Irish fisheries, challenge the boundaries within which scholarly research is traditionally presented, and render the research accessible to a wide range of audiences.

This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that engages with ontological scholarship on fisheries management and governance, and more generally, to debates on environmental governance. It argues that fisheries governance is an ontological challenge that raises questions of culture, equity, legitimacy and inclusion/exclusion, requiring more context-sensitive and politically aware fisheries governance approaches. By engaging with the concept of political ontology, and drawing from empirical research carried out in Ireland's offshore islands, five ontological assumptions are identified that underpin Irish fisheries governance and management policies and practices, and categorised as social-historical, ecological, geographical, technocratic and markets-driven. Articulating and examining these assumptions provides insights into why policy objectives aimed at supporting small-scale fisheries and their communities may, in practice, not be effective when they are operationalised within a governance paradigm designed around the realities of large-scale, full-time, highly mobile and more economically productive operators. Despite the efforts of ontologically disobedient islanders, the enactment of these ontological assumptions into the dominant world of fisheries governance inhibits the emergence of possible worlds that would enact Irish island inshore fisheries through island logics. The paper concludes that the squeeze on Ireland's island inshore fishers is not simply spatial, it is ontological. The dominant fisheries ontology that has been created by the interplay of ontological assumptions undermines the State's critical policy to maintain and manage Irish fisheries as a public resource so that opportunities are not concentrated into the hands of large and powerful fishing interests.

Almost three thousand islanders live on eighteen islands off the west coast of Ireland. These islands are not connected to the mainland by a land causeway. While many of these islands are dependent on a small-scale fishing industry for survival, their fishing communities face challenges in navigating complex fisheries governance systems at local, regional, national and EU scales. Between 2018 and 2020, I engaged with Irish island fishing communities, the fishing industry and the policy environment in interrogating the challenges faced by island fishing communities and their initiatives to manage island fisheries on a collective, seasonal basis. These initiatives - a fish producer organisation specific to the islands fleet and legislation to provide island small-scale fishers with ringfenced access to valuable quota-controlled species in island waters – have failed to materialise. This collection of found poems is intended to provide a snapshot of the complexity of the issues at play during the research period. They highlight the multiple storylines that jostle for space and visibility in the fisheries governance context. The mosaic of voices demonstrate that contestation and contradictions exist and play out not just between islanders and non-islanders, but between islanders themselves, often with no resolution.

Irish fisheries policy discourse insists that fishing opportunities are a public resource that are managed to ensure that such opportunities are not concentrated into the hands of large fishing interests. Yet, an examination of the ontological assumptions underlying Irish fisheries governance reveals that access to valuable quota-controlled stocks is shaped by historical assumptions that reinforce the worlds or ontological 'realities' of larger vessels, while different requirements combine to frustrate the attempts of small-scale vessels to assert a reality that is designed around their differences. Drawing on ethnographic research into small-scale fishing communities in Ireland's offshore islands, and supported by an emerging theoretical focus on the politics of diverse ontologies, I argue that we need to examine the ontological assumptions underpinning State approaches to fisheries governance to gain a fuller understanding of the on-the-ground implications of the governance arrangements that shape the day-to-day lives of fishing communities in Ireland's offshore islands. I consider six key ontological assumptions (social-historical, ecological, geographical, technocratic, material and markets-driven) that define these approaches. I focus on two islands-driven fisheries governance initiatives that have challenged these ontological assumptions in their assertion of particular fisheries worlds, and I consider what the State's response, of retrenchment of the ontological status quo, means for fisheries policy and governance. I conclude that by failing to accommodate diverse ontologies, the State is locked into (re)producing a fisheries seascape that is stifling the exploration of alternative governance possibilities, while privileging institutional arrangements, approaches and practices that do not challenge the ontological status quo.

PUBLISHED ; PRE-PRINT ; Cham ; Approximately 86% of Irish fishing vessels, as of 2018, are classified as small-scale or inshore (under 12 m in length). These vessels are predominantly active within Ireland?s territorial waters (up to 12 nautical miles) and as such are subject to national management to a greater extent than the larger vessels that operate in the shared waters that are directly governed by the European Union Common Fisheries Policy. Despite the social, cultural and economic importance of the inshore sector to small coastal communities, a governance framework for small-scale fisheries in Ireland has only recently been established. This paper gives a brief overview of Irish inshore fisheries including the numbers and profile of participants, target fisheries and its social, cultural and economic significance. An account is given of a previous unsuccessful attempt to establish a governance system for the sector. The paper then describes and gives some fishers? perspectives on a second iteration of inshore management established in 2014, the Inshore Fisheries Forums, and the recent emergence of a number of representative bodies for Irish inshore fishers. These initiatives are discussed in the broader context of the fragmented nature of marine governance in Ireland.

Approximately 86% of Irish fishing vessels, as of 2018, are classified as small-scale or inshore (under 12 m in length). These vessels are predominantly active within Ireland's territorial waters (up to 12 nautical miles) and as such are subject to national management to a greater extent than the larger vessels that operate in the shared waters that are directly governed by the European Union Common Fisheries Policy. Despite the social, cultural and economic importance of the inshore sector to small coastal communities, a governance framework for small-scale fisheries in Ireland has only recently been established. This paper gives a brief overview of Irish inshore fisheries including the numbers and profile of participants, target fisheries and its social, cultural and economic significance. An account is given of a previous unsuccessful attempt to establish a governance system for the sector. The paper then describes and gives some fishers' perspectives on a second iteration of inshore management established in 2014, the Inshore Fisheries Forums, and the recent emergence of a number of representative bodies for Irish inshore fishers. These initiatives are discussed in the broader context of the fragmented nature of marine governance in Ireland.

The development of the Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) industry is part of the EC Blue Growth Strategy. It brings together a range of relationships across people, sea, and energy, from developers to local communities and policymakers. This calls for diverse approaches, moving beyond an oppositional mindset to one that can establish an inclusive community around MRE development. Ownership of the marine environment is a legal issue, but MRE devices operate within a cultural and emotional sense of place. Early, sustained community engagement and advocacy is crucial to developing an industry whose impacts are likely to be felt before its social benefits materialise. Crucially, local communities could be supported by Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research in creating new mythologies and imaginaries through which MRE technologies become an integral part of their culture, as well as part of their biophysical environment. A complex physical, political, and legal environment provides the context for these new marine energy technologies, and its development provides opportunities for SSH research to address issues around the sea and to integrate into the design of new marine energy seascapes.

The Mediterranean region is of fundamental importance to Europe given its strategic position. The responsibility for its overall ecosystem integrity is shared by European Union Member States (EU-MS) and other Mediterranean countries. A juxtaposition of overlapping governance instruments occurred recently in the region, with the implementation of both the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) for EU-MS and the Ecosystem Approach Strategy (ECAP) for all Mediterranean countries, including EU-MS. Both MSFD and ECAP are structured around vision-driven processes to achieve Good Environmental Status and a Healthy Environment, respectively. These processes have clear ecosystem-based, integrated policy objectives to guarantee the preservation and integrity of Mediterranean marine ecosystem goods and services. However, adoption of these instruments, especially those related to the new EUMS directives on marine policy, could result in a governance gap in addition to the well-known economic gap between the EU and the non-EU political blocs. We identify two complementary requirements for effective implementation of both MSFD and ECAP that could work together to reduce this gap, to ensure a better alignment between MSFD and ECAP and better planning for stakeholder engagement. These are key issues for the future success of these instruments in a Mediterranean region where discrepancies between societal and ecological objectives may pose a challenge to these processes.

Choke points are social, cultural, political, institutional, or psychological obstructions of social-ecological systems that constrain progress toward an environmental objective. Using a soft systems methodology, different types of chokes points were identified in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, the Baltic, and the North and Mediterranean seas. The choke points were of differing types: cultural and political choke points were identified in Barra and the Mediterranean, respectively, whereas the choke points in the North Sea and Baltic Sea were dependent on differing values toward the mitigation of eutrophication. We conclude with suggestions to identify and address choke points.