Freediving in seas of Plankton: a collective breath-hold through vulnerability

The thesis critically examines how anthropocentric racial capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy materialize in oceanic and respiratory dynamics while also considering potential lines of resistance. It builds on self-reflexive ocean justice practices that recognize embodiment and material vulnerabilities. Structured as a series of material-discursive dives, each chapter explores the entangled relationships between humans, the ocean, and plankton. Chapter 1, “A Pre-Dive Briefing,” establishes the theoretical foundations, engaging with Karen Barad’s Agential Realism and multispecies ethnography, while also addressing decolonial critiques of Eurocentric epistemologies. It introduces the necessity of a more-than-wet methodology that accounts for both oceanic and atmospheric processes, positioning freediving as a unique methodological lens. Chapter 2, “Free-falling Within,” follows Our Freediver’s descent, focusing on the speculative experience of encountering plankton. This chapter theorizes “Planktonic Intimacies,” exploring the relational entanglements between human microbiota and marine microbes, while engaging with queer methodologies to resist anthropocentric perspectives.Chapter 3, “Breath Shortness at the Surface,” shifts attention to breathing as a site of both oppression and resistance. Engaging with queer-crip and anti-colonial Black studies, it conceptualizes “Combat Breath-hold,” exemplified by the freediving activism of Zandile Ndhlovu. This chapter also critiques the racialized whiteness of ocean science, tourism, and conservation, advocating for a decolonial approach to marine advocacy. Chapter 4, “Breath-Holding in Hypoxic and More-than-Blue Waters,” returns to the ecological implications of human-ocean-plankton relations. It critiques the colonial gaze of oceanic purity narratives. Examining the myth that “every second breath comes from plankton,” the chapter mobilizes Derridean hauntology to reconceptualize planktonic temporalities. It concludes with an analysis of ocean deoxygenation, positioning freediving as an embodied methodology for engaging with this crisis through care and scientific commitment. Ultimately, this thesis advocates for an ecopolitical engagement with oceanic assemblages that is at once scientific, political, and artistic, urging a reconsideration of multispecies justice in the face of planetary change.