The high seas face increasing industrial activities leading to unsustainable resource exploitation and unequal sharing. This paper explores creating future visions by combining computational text analysis with a structured futuring approach. This resulted in four science fiction stories capturing the system's complexity, inherent future uncertainty, and questioning unsustainable trajectories while highlighting diverse future options. Analyzing these visions through the lens of imaginaries demonstrates how futuristic stories connect to current realities and scientific evidence. The paper argues that engaging with alternative futures opens transformative spaces to rethink human-high seas relationships, fostering the emergence of novel imaginaries.

Hannah Marlen Lübker, Patrick W. Keys, Andrew Merrie, Laura M. Pereira, Juan C. Rocha, Guillermo Ortuño Crespo