Blue Planetary Health and Multispecies Responsibility: A Relational Framework for Ocean Governance

Contemporary Blue Planetary Health frameworks frequently approach marine degradation primarily as a technical management problem while insufficiently addressing the relational, ethical, and political–economic conditions driving ocean collapse. The framework proposes that dominant marine governance paradigms continue to reproduce anthropocentric and extractivist assumptions that reduce oceans to economic assets rather than recognizing them as living multispecies relational systems. In response, the study develops the Blue Stratified Relational Responsibility Framework (BSRRF), an interdisciplinary model integrating multispecies ethics, marine psychophysiology, environmental humanities, political ecology, Indigenous relational ontologies, and ocean governance. The framework advances three central claims: marine sustainability requires relational rather than purely instrumental governance; humans possess asymmetrical ecological responsibility due to their technological and institutional power; and meaningful Blue Planetary Health transformation requires simultaneous shifts in moral imagination, affective perception, governance systems, and political economy. The study further critiques dominant Blue Economy paradigms for reproducing extractivist and colonial dynamics under narratives of sustainability and innovation. Ultimately, the framework argues that although the ocean crisis manifests ecologically, its underlying drivers are simultaneously epistemological, political, economic, and civilizational. Consequently, advancing Blue Planetary Health requires integrated transformations in education, governance, public policy, and multispecies ethical responsibility.