Marine-space assemblages: Towards a different praxis of fisheries policy and management

In this paper, we discuss the intent and purpose of Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Management Act/National Standard 8 and examine how it reinforces problematized conceptualizations of marine-space(s). We then discuss shifts in sensibilities around marine-space, especially with concern to notions of fishing communities and their inclusion in planning and management processes. Through this, we underscore a problematic pervasive in conceptual models used to account for relations between humans and marine-spaces and how this contributes to failures to fulfill regulatory responsibilities to fishing communities. We then draw on new materialist insights into assemblages and affect and emotion to offer alternative ways to think about, research, approach, and manage marine-spaces through more nuanced and informed considerations of their broad, complex, and ever-present human and socio-cultural components.