Eating fish in the age of anthropogenic climate change: imaginaries and sociogenesis of representations of changes in fish quality

In the short term, climate change is forecasted to affect fish quality by decreasing omega-3 reserves, thereby impacting human health. Together with scientific uncertainties, climate change imaginaries are diffused among the public, who struggle to make sense of them and imagine the consequences for their own diets. Our study scrutinizes the sociogenesis of representations associated with changes in fish food that are not visible for nonexperts, using an extensive, qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with consumers. After a thematic analysis related to the imagined impacts of climate change on fish, we analyzed the anchoring process of representations in scrutinizing the role of food antinomies through three categories of fish eaters (traditional, nutrient-oriented, and ecology-oriented) that emerged from the interviews. The results indicate that preexisting food antinomies allow sorting out significant/nonsignificant climate change imaginaries and guide the anchoring process in reducing the psychological distance of climate events while making more concrete their impacts on fish food for consumers. This study contributes to bridging theories on food antinomies, imaginaries – as cognitive resources for envisioning wider changes – and social representations – as cognitive processes for anchoring the “unknown” and turning it into more significant correspondence with food materiality. Our study provides key insights for shaping more integrated health policies that address the combined challenges of marine climate change and nutrition, while water-centric communication can help the public grasp the links between ocean and human health.