ABSTRACT
The sea in Shakespeare imparts a strangeness marked by distinctive aesthetic effects: it is a space of invisibility and unknowing, where the limitations of sight undermine epistemological certainty. The mythology of an infinitely abundant ocean is no longer tenable, even to those whose economic and political interests impede their acknowledgment of the seas' finitude- and historicity. Oil spills, industrial aquaculture, longlining, eutrophication, water diversion, and other causes of habitat loss inflict enormous ecological damage that continues to transform the oceans, seas, and waterways of the world. The global ocean in Shakespeare makes nature strange. No longer the awe-inspiring realm of divine mystery, the global ocean is fast becoming-like rainforests, mountains, and the polar regions- another depleted and devastated feature of this blue planet where have people being. The sea in its socio-cultural construction continues to be associated with visual wonders- Cousteau's coral reefs and whale sharks, the sunken Titanic captured on film- brought to people by modern visual technologies.
