A new study by Laurie Sellars, postgraduate fellow of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School, and Becca Franks, an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University, investigates how marine aquaculture or ‘mariculture’ — the cultivation of aquatic organisms in the ocean — generates a suite of risks: environmental degradation, harms to wildlife communities and individuals, welfare harms for captive animals, and shifts in how humans perceive the nonhuman world. The article describes these risks collectively as 'dewilding,' defined as the process of privileging anthropocentric interests, perspectives, sovereignty, and agency at the expense of other interests and considerations The study, 'How Mariculture Expansion is Dewilding the Ocean and its Inhabitants,' was published in the journal Science Advances on Oct. 16, 2024. Sellars and Franks discuss their research.
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