This text is an edited version of an online conversation between Katherine Richardson, biological oceanographer and leader of the Sustainability Science Centre and principal investigator for the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen, and artist Sonia Levy, which took place in May 2022. The interview functions as complimentary material that furthers the inquiries of Levy’s film Creatures of the Lines (2021), made in collaboration with anthropologist Heather Anne Swanson and presented as part of the third season of st_age.

The interview discusses ideas such as the heterogeneity and three-dimensionality of oceanic worlds; the terrestrial bias that shapes aquatic ecological concepts (e.g. the ways we incorrectly try to understand oceanic environments via principles from land-based sciences); the limits of Earth system sciences in accounting for the profound effects of biodiversity; as well as the importance of more substantially considering the interdependent relations among different life forms.

Click on the link here in order to listen to the audio version of the conversation.