Abstract

The FLoating Instrument Platform (FLIP), a seagoing vessel managed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, offers an unusual vantage point on the sea, one useful for reflecting on how the figure of the “field” is made in oceanography—and how it rotates in and out of alignment with attempts to render portions of the sea more lab-like. FLIP works like this: in its horizontal conformation, the vessel travels like an ordinary oceangoing craft. But by “flipping” 90 degrees into a vertical position once it arrives at its destination—with all the instrumentation inside swiveling correspondingly—it becomes an enormous spar buoy, more or less stationary in the wave field. This essay draws on the author’s anthropology-of-science fieldwork on FLIP to offer prompts for thinking about objectivity, orientation, and perspective in the practice of at-sea fieldwork.