Prospecting Ocean examines the ocean as a political, technological and economic frontier: a space increasingly mapped, monitored, extracted from and governed through systems that are often presented as neutral science.

Curator and writer Stefanie Hessler moves between deep-sea mining, marine law, colonialism, visual culture, military technology and contemporary art, tracking the networks of capital, research, law and representation operating through them. Artists, scientists and activists appear alongside mining regimes, seabed exploration and the infrastructures through which the ocean dissected. The result is less a conventional environmental book than a study of power: who gets to see the ocean, who gets to define it, and what kinds of extraction become possible once it is rendered measurable.

Includes a visual essay by Armin Linke and a foreword by Bruno Latour.

The MIT Press / TBA21–Academy, 2019. Paperback with French flaps. Illustrated throughout in colour and black-and-white. Very light shelf and handling wear, with minor rubbing to covers; internally clean and bright, binding firm. Very good to near fine condition.