Ocean memory in abalone stories of the Anthropocene

In this “Practice Bridge” essay, I turn to literary fiction as a source for thinking about interconnected forms of ocean memory that are under chemical threat in the Anthropocene. Focusing on Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s short story duology Awabi (2018), or “abalone,” I examine two forms of ocean memory that concern the lifeways of abalone and the Japanese Ama divers who have traditionally harvested them. In both stories, a future of increased ocean acidification interrupts the abalone’s chemosensory memory and the Ama diver’s cultural memory. Cultural memory depends on the ongoing survival of abalone, a precondition for passing diving traditions to their daughters. Acidified seas threaten the formation of abalone shells and cause the erosion of social relationships that depend on ocean health. Through narrative techniques of synaesthesia (the crossing of two senses) and allegory, Wong shows how the living memory of both abalone and Ama divers is interconnected, and how crises of oceanic health affect the survival of cultural practices. Awabi succeeds in dramatizing ocean acidification through techniques of sensation, techniques that could complement the empirical case for addressing ocean acidification as a form of forgetting in the Anthropocene.