Crisis of Meanings: Divergent Experiences and Perceptions of the Marine Environment in Victoria, Australia Tanya J. King Anthropology, SAGES, The University of Melboume The oceans of the world are regularly depicted as under threat from human exploitation with the problem portrayed as being of 'global' concem. In a world market characterised by the division of labour, many of those who eat fish do so without directly experiencing the ocean as a domain of productive utility. Rather, their encounters are with representations that depict the 'natural' world as an aesthetic object of contemplation, and environmentalist discourses that identify human activities as'threatening marine ecosystems. So prevalent is this experience that tangible institutions, such as state fisheries management bodies, have emerged, acting to reinforce the ontology of this 'contemplated' oeean, giving weight to the illusion that humans can, and should, appreciate it only from afar. In this representation, commercial fishers are regularly depicted as transgressing a 'natural' boundary between humans and the environment. It is when the world is simultaneously encountered as an object of consumptive utility and aesthetic utility that the human role in the environment becomes ambiguous and a sense of crisis arises. This paper investigates disjunctions in experiences and understandings that contribute to environmental anxiety, and debates over the appropriate use of the ocean. Introduction Fish populations and marine ecosystems are increasingly presented as under threat from human exploitation with the problem portrayed as one of 'global' concem (McGoodwin 1990; Van Weigel 1995; Crean and Symes 1996; Aplin et al. 1999; Suzuki and Dressel 1999; Rees 2003). Images of massive 'factory' ships, defensive fishers and enormous hauls of dead fish typically feature in depictions of a '...global fisheries crisis that looms as a critical threat to world food security' (Cowan and Schienberg 2002). However, there seems to be another crisis, noted by Dickens (1996: i): 'one of the main features of contemporary environmental crisis is that no-one has a clear picture of what is taking place'. People understand the world in ways that correspond to their particular experiences. This paper thus investigates disjunctions in experiences and understandings. The purpose is to consider not an 'actual' environmental phenomenon but the sense of crisis that arises when multiple, conflicting experiences and understandings are encountered simultaneously, and how this 'crisis' manifests in debates in Australia about the appropriate use of the ocean. The image of 'the globe'—'the blue planet' or 'the Earth'—as a universally shared object of contemplation and as under threat from those who fail to act on their responsibilities as THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, 2005,16(3), 350-365