Sea lice or subsistence? Peasant multispecies justice in the plantationocene

Abstract

Sea lice pose serious problems for the fish farming industry, subsistence livelihoods, ecosystem health, and multispecies flourishing. This ethnographic essay examines the reaction of subsistence fishers on Guatemala's Pacific coast to a sea lice infestation in an estuary caused by an industrial shrimp farm to intervene in discussions of multi-species justice. We bring scholarship on multispecies relations into dialogue with theories of the Plantationocene, critiques of development from Critical Agrarian Studies, and Indigenous perspectives on human-nature reciprocity. We argue that subsistence fishers’ efforts to remove the sea lice constituted a defense of subsistence livelihoods grounded in human-nature relationality. By acutely threatening their right to fish, sea lice acted as a catalyst, activating reciprocal responsibilities to defend the estuary in favor of alternative ways of living on the land. We show how their efforts to exclude enacted a relational ethics and call for more attention to more-than-human relations within food sovereignty movements.