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there emerged key concepts and modes of systematising nature that underpin the natural

sciences and environmental management that we know today. Naturalists, who were often

part of colonial missions, systematically observed, identified, described and ordered plants,

minerals and animals. In relation to the environment, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) is hailed as

the father of taxonomy for his work on the introduction of a binomial nomenclature system.

In this system each species is given a Latin name composed of two parts, the genera and the

species. In Foucauldian terms we could say that such a system would not have been possible

without the wider discourse of nature and mode of ordering the world that was emerging,

principally one that divided the world by similarity and difference. The genus indicates

similarities (yet difference in comparison to other genus) and the species indicates difference

among that genus. The story of Linnaeus is also part of the story of disciplinary

specialisation, including the development of marine biology and ichthyology upon which

fishery management is based today. Linnaeus travelled to the University of Uppsala, Sweden

and worked closely with Peter Artedi who was enrolled to study chemistry at the university

(Wheeler 1962, p. ix). Wheeler notes in the prologue to the 1962 reprint of Artedi’s

Ichthyologia (first published in 1738) that:

The spirit of friendly rivalry drove them on in competition, but eventually the
natural interests of each made one or the other pre-eminent in a particular field.
Thus ARCTAEDIUS [Artedis, original emphasis] excelled in alchemy,
ichthyology and herpetology, while he yielded the fields of botany, birds and
insects to LINNAEUS [original emphasis]. (Wheeler 1962, p. xi)

Thereafter, Artedis was known as the father of ichthyology.

It is not difficult to see how such specialisation has extended to today and works to

produce a framework upon which marine management is based, a framework that has not yet

found a way to reconcile the complex interaction between humans and more-than-human

marine environments. Indeed the first insight gained from a genealogy of sustainability

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