Knowledge shaped through long-term relationships with the sea takes many forms, from navigation and fishing to ritual practice and everyday coastal life. These ways of knowing challenge land-based scientific and political frameworks and show that the ocean is a lived space of movement, meaning, and social organisation rather than an empty surface open to control.

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The Think Tank unites specialists from many disciplines and from all parts of the world. It pays particular attention to the Pacific, where some of the most complex maritime knowledge systems have developed and where global debates on climate change, biodiversity, and ocean governance now converge. Its work also engages with ocean-connected societies in other regions. This approach defends maritime ways of knowing and confronts narratives that marginalise them, with the aim of reshaping how the ocean is understood and governed in public and political discourse.