This study examines the maritime practices and related socio-economic-ecological relations that have produced an aquapelago in the lagoon space around Luang, one of Indonesia’s outermost small islands. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, our findings demonstrate that traditional marine resource practices produce differentiations of marine space determined by ecological rhythms and related temporalities, social roles and scales of activity. These practices and their outcomes demonstrate that aquapelagos are complex and volatile spaces that are continuously configured and negotiated by interactions between human and non-human entities, their activities and environmental processes. These spaces also function as sites of knowledge production, where ecological understanding is developed and continuously adapted through embodied experience and intergenerational transmission. As importantly, our study emphasises the extent to which aquapelagic spaces are shaped by unequal access to resources, differentiated mobility capacities and social structures that regulate participation in local livelihood activities. Furthermore, increasing integration into global economic networks, particularly through high-value marine commodities, illustrates the extent to which local fishing practices are embedded within broader processes of commodification and value chains that determine patterns of spatial use and access. By foregrounding everyday practices as the basis of spatial production, this study demonstrates that aquapelagic spaces and temporalities are continuously reconfigured through the interplay between livelihood practices, ecological dynamics and global political-economic processes.

Aquapelagic spacemaritime practicessocio-economic-ecological relationsLuanglagoons