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Han, Lisa Yin. 2024. DEEPWATER ALCHEMY. Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the 
Seafloor. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 256 pp. ISBN: 9781517915940 
 
 
Despite what its cover might suggest, this is not a book entirely focused on deep-sea mining. 

However, the timing of the publication of Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming 

of the Seafloor could not be more appropriate, given the growing global concern about the impending 

commercialisation of seabed minerals. Nor is this strictly an anthropological book. Instead, it lies at 

the intersection of environmental studies, media studies and science and technology studies, 

incorporating decolonial, feminist and multi-species perspectives. Nevertheless, this beautifully 

written work is sure to become essential reading for anthropologists interested in oceanic extraction, 

as it provides insight into the cultural representation of the seafloor. 

   

Media scholar Lisa Yin Han explores how the deep sea has historically been, and continues to be, 

constructed as an extractive frontier, particularly through ocean engineering — the technological 

apparatus that enables us to imagine the sea as a “speculative replacement of land” (6). This 

transformation is encapsulated by the book's central concept of “alchemy,” referring !the material-

discursive becoming of the deep ocean, where power is encoded into naturalizations of human 

technological feats” (4). One of the book"s key arguments is that mediation — the way in which we 

come to understand the ocean through infrastructures and media technologies — is an extractive 

process in itself. As she explains, certain forms of media operation (though not all environmental 

mediations) “participate in nonreciprocal acts of removal, accumulation, and domination” (15), 

thereby laying the groundwork for extractive industries.  

 

Each of the five chapters that compose the book explores different manifestations of the entanglement 

between media, digital technologies, and the petroleum and mining industries. As Han argues, a 

unifying thread across them is the drive for the !removal of information and material from the seafloor 

to the surface” (21), fueled by a !thirst to know the unknown” (22).  

 

In Chapter One, the author illustrates how the deep seafloor is mediated as both an archive and a 

frontier — two sides of the same coin. In fact, resource extraction is not limited to natural materials 



 

 

but also includes cultural and epistemological resources. As she argues, !our mediations of the 

seafloor as an archive of cultural heritage are far from innocent” (28). Han introduces the concept of 

the !salvage-extraction dynamic” to emphasize that both archaeological expeditions aimed at 

recovering and making visible what has been lost, and seabed extraction, are ultimately driven by 

underlying geopolitical agendas and narratives of national identity. She also highlights how, within 

this linear and static conception of sedimented history, nonhumans have largely been excluded.  

 

Continuing this historical perspective, Chapter 2 examines the extractive mediations of the ocean 

through the lens of sound technologies used in petroleum exploration, particularly explosives and 

seismic surveys. Drawing on sound studies and adopting a multi-species perspective on sensing and 

sounding, Han seeks to make visible and rematerialize what is !taken” in the process of framing noise 

as interference and signal as meaningful content (61). She shows how seismic surveys offer partial, 

selective representations of the seabed, effectively !flattening” underwater space and concealing their 

ecological harm. This analysis also sheds light on how the offshore industry legitimizes its extractive 

practices — such as drilling and surveying — by framing them as necessary for acquiring knowledge 

about !how much you have” (75). This raises broader questions about who drives the knowledge-

production process. One of the central justifications for deep-sea mining today, for example, is that 

granting exploration licenses is essential for industry to !discover” what exists at extreme depths — 

often under the pretense of contributing to science. 

In the following chapter, Han turns her attention more directly to deep-sea mining, focusing on the 

role of sediment plumes — clouds of sediment particles stirred up by extracting operations — in 

shaping how environmental risk is socially constructed. Through the framework of elemental media 

theory, Han argues that these plumes are not merely objects of scientific representation, but active 

participants in the discourse-making of risk. She contends that definitions of underwater hazards are 

often obscured by terms such as !resilience” (94), echoing concerns raised by geographer John Childs 

(2019), who critiques how deep-sea mining stakeholders invoke a kind of !nature license to operate” 

rather than a genuine !social license to operate.” By likening the turbulence caused by mining to 

naturally occurring underwater phenomena — such as hydrothermal vents or submarine volcanoes 

— stakeholders strategically downplay the perceived anthropogenic impact (ivi). In this chapter, Han 

shows how the language of resilience shifts responsibility away from human actors and onto the 

adaptive capacities of nonhuman life forms. Her analysis poses a critical question: !Is there a temporal 

limit that marks the boundary between turbulence and catastrophe?” (116). This provocation 



 

 

challenges dominant narratives of sustainability and calls for deeper reflection on the long-term 

consequences of extractive activities.  

Another powerful example of extractive mediation emerges in Chapter 4, in which Han positions 

whales at the centre of her analysis. She explores how the desire to observe whales has evolved into 

observing the ocean through them, as telemetry devices transform the animals into mobile 

oceanographic sensors. Drawing inspiration from Jennifer Gabrys's Program Earth (2016), Han 

conceptualizes whales and autonomous underwater sensors as “coworkers in mobile ocean-observing 

points" (126), revealing how care and intimacy are increasingly structured by data logics. This 

transformation situates whale telemetry within a larger global initiative — Oceans 2.0, or the “smart” 

ocean — framing the ocean as a vast, sensor-laden body akin to “a permanently intubated patient” 

(150). While Han's analysis highlights the convergence of scientific and industrial interests in the 

production of ocean knowledge, it also suggests that these technologically mediated relationships 

may give rise to “unexpected interspecies intimacies” that transcend instrumental rationality (158). 

As Han shows in the final chapter, observatories, as the cabled seafloor pipeline, can “also challenge 

humanity’s perception of itself in relation to the seas” (187). A compelling example she makes is the 

phenomenon of !biofouling,” where marine organisms colonize human technologies. Han interprets 

these entanglements as invitations to imagine alternative human-ocean futurities that move beyond 

control and efficiency toward the recognition of the deep-ocean as a heterogeneous space.  

This book provides a brilliant and timely intervention into contemporary debates around oceanic 

knowledge production but also on the Blue Economy. It speaks to the growing urgency — shared by 

scientists, industrial stakeholders, and conservationists — to fill the so-called !knowledge gaps” of 

the deep ocean. Yet Han's work challenges the assumption that more data necessarily equates to better 

stewardship. Instead, she offers a thoughtful deceleration, inviting us to question the cultural, 

political, and technological assumptions that underpin our engagement with the ocean. Her analysis 

culminates in a call for ethical ocean mediation, including the imperative to !make space for the 

unknown” (199). Han reminds us that human relationships with deepwater ecosystems are shaped not 

only by what we can observe but also by what remains beyond our epistemic reach. What would it 

mean to resist the urge to collect data?  

On a more personal note, what I found missing — particularly from an anthropological standpoint — 

was a stronger presence of Han"s interlocutors. Their voices are mostly absent, hovering behind the 

analysis rather than actively shaping it. 



 

 

Bibliography 

Childs, John. 2019. “Greening the blue? Corporate strategies for legitimising deep sea mining”,  

Political Geography 74, 102060. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.102060. 

Gabrys, Jennifer. 2016. Program earth: Environmental sensing technology and the making of a 

computational planet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 

 

Author Bio 

Marta  Gentilucci is  a  Marie  Skłodowska-Curie  Postdoctoral  Fellow  at  the  Department  of  Social  

Anthropology  (University  of  Bergen),  where  she  leads  the  project  OCEAN  MINeD  on  deep-

sea  mining.  She  is  also  the  co-founder  and  co-convenor  of  the  EASA  Anthropology  of  the  

Seas   Network. She has previously conducted ethnographic research in Mayotte  on  human–

environment  relations  as  part  of  an  interdisciplinary  project,  and in Kanaky–New Caledonia on 

mining issues for her PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, awarded by the University of Milano-

Bicocca. She is the author of the monograph La montagna e il capitale. Il cammino kanak del nichel 

(Prospero, 2022).  

  

 

 

 

 

© 2025 Marta Gentilucci 

 


