ABSTRACT
Marine governance, exploitation and protection are all dependent on and shaped by processes of mediation. While this has always been the case, it is increasingly significant as the pace by which the ocean is mapped, sensed and datafied rises and the ocean is transformed from a wilderness into an environed space. A key contemporary media for ocean environing is the Argo program, a global array of autonomous profiling floats in operation since the early 21st century. This chapter examines the initial proposal and development of Argo by placing the program in the context of environing media technologies used to study and understand the ocean since the start of the modern period. Our aim is to show how a gradual accumulation of ocean data and developing mediating technologies have informed and shaped the Argo program, but also how the modern floats introduce a new era of knowing and mediating the marine environment and, by association, the planetary system as an integrated whole. We discuss how Argo floats and the data flows they generate mediate specific forms of knowledge, with implications for how and in what terms the ocean is perceived as well as for how ideas and practices of ocean governance are formulated. We also consider the reverse; how a perceived need for monitoring and evaluating the ocean influences future developments of the Argo program, to make the ocean fully accounted for in the broader notion and project of the mediated planet.
