The ocean, in other words, has stories and histories, a fact that may be obvious to many of you, but that has a, compra argues, been backgrounded, literally and figuratively, in certain representational and narrative traditions. What happens? The conference seems to ask when the ocean is foregrounded or when the boundaries separating foreground from background dissolve. To say that the ocean has stories and histories isn't the same thing as saying that these stories and histories are only human, or that the sea is only interpretable in so far as it reflects human behaviour. A compra speaks about the ocean as the abode of innumerable ghosts and as a place where things not only disappear, but are made to reemerge, sometimes strangely and often in a manner beyond human control. Thinking along these lines, maybe it isn't so much a matter of willing the ocean to express certain meanings, or studying it for particular signs, but opening oneself to its communications. These communications may not be immediately comprehensible. And they are very likely to prove to prove unfamiliar, not to say uncomfortable, but they constitute a language needing learning. Part of doing so, of course, is acknowledging forms, conventions, traditions and cultures that have historically been better students.