Art-Science Collaborations for Naturecultures at Darien’s Blessing of the Fleet
The American South Atlantic is home to the United States’ only operational jellyfish fishery. Located in the state of Georgia, since the turn of the millennium a group of fishers have offset their annual shrimping income (the seasons run opposite one another) by fishing for cannonball jellyfish (Stomolophus meleagris; colloquially called jellyballs). The last decade has seen a ‘greying’ fleet, loss of state support, and escalation of trade wars, leading to the fishery’s socioeconomic decline. Jellyfish Photo Booth, supported with Festival Funnel Funding, brought together QM academic (Matthew Beach), a food scientist, and a jellyfish aquaculturist to engage Darien’s working waterfront community about the fishery’s continuing resilience.
Jellyfish Photo Booth is a participatory and socially engaged practice-based research project, and one element (empirical chapter) of my wider QMUL-funded doctoral project, Gone Jellyballing: Gelatinous Life Sciences in the American South. Taking the form of an analogue silver gelatine photographic process demonstration, the project debuted at Darien, Georgia’s 2025 Blessing of the Fleet. Darien is the small-town home to the docks from which the fishers depart and the processing company (Golden Island International) that they transfer their catches to for rendering. Blessing of the Fleet events are Catholic-originating traditions where a local priest or pastor blesses the fishing fleet for a prosperous season, often with an accompanying festival (e.g. with music, food and business vendors, parades, art exhibitions).
What makes Jellyfish Photo Booth unique in part is the silver gelatine emulsion recipe’s use of cannonball jellyfish gelatine rather than normative bovine source material. Silver gelatine is digital photography’s pre-cursing mass imaging system (almost all 20th century photographic films and paper prints are silver gelatine). The process involves suspending silver salts in gelatine, producing a light-sensitive jelly that produces negative images that afford sharp enlargement and duplication as positives with ease.
In September 2024, University of Georgia food scientist Peter Chiarelli and I completed a Material Transfer Agreement of his (and Principal Investigator Kevin Mis Solval’s) patent-pending cannonball jellyfish gelatine powder. As part of my wider research, I have been following their innovation project, which in part seeks to create domestic demand for the fishery via new collagen products.
Attendees were then invited to have their portrait captured with the emulsion and keep the resulting photographic print (I coated the jellyfish silver gelatine on paper rather than a transparency film or glass for ease). This practice facilitated place-based engagement between Darien’s residents and fishery, and its embedded ecologies. The research artefacts contribute to the locality’s material culture while hosting conversational space about the intersectional complexities of the coast’s ecologies, foregrounding gelatinous life’s role in creating liveable multispecies futures.
Jellyfish Photo Booth’s second aim was uniting myself, Peter Chiarelli, and aquaculturist Travis Brandwood. In addition to following Chiarelli’s research and product development, I have also observed Brandwood in his lab, accompanied him on jellyfishing trips, and recorded his trajectory as he builds North America’s largest jellyfish polyp (jellyfishes’ stationary life cycle stage) research collection at The Jellyfish Compendium.
Alongside the project’s pop-up photographic darkroom, Chiarelli exhibited samples of his first jellyfish collagen product (a lotion) produced by his soon-to-launch company, JellyCoUSA. Brandwood operated a microscope featuring cannonball jellyfish ephyra (the final larval stage that develops into the reproductive medusa phase) that he cultured from beached jellies. Jellyfish Photo Booth not only enabled dialogue between us and Darien’s public, but it also facilitated research and practice discussions amongst ourselves as we gathered together in-person for the first time.
With support from the Darien – McIntosh Chamber of Commerce, Jellyfish Photo Booth was positioned near a festival entrance and in between the food and non-food vendors and charged a reduced fee as a research initiative. The festival took place over three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 11–13 April) and we operated from open to sunset (the emulsion is mostly sensitive to UV light). Over this period, we spoke to between 150 and 200 individuals, couples, and families.
My favourite moments were when attendees joined me in the darkroom tent, and I experienced their excitement seeing the invisible latent image appear in the photographic developer during processing. For some there were new meanings ascribed to memories of creating their own prints as they discovered the role of gelatine in the process. Younger participants lamented the local high school’s own darkroom’s decommissioning as they expressed interest in my own academic and industry trajectory. This project also marked the longest period of time Chiarelli was able to spend in Darien during his doctoral research, and the first time he was able to engage with some of the people who may benefit from his creations. One woman with a nutrient deficiency was particularly enthralled by the possibility of a locally made marine collagen product. I also learned from Chiarelli skills and techniques for engaging public audiences and will forever remember him waving around an adult cannonball jellyfish preserved in formalin while asking people ‘Hey, do you want to learn about some jellyfish?!’.
Brandwood brought his science communication skills, honed from previous talks at primary schools, public aquariums, conferences, and trade shows. He was able to share cannonball jellyfish’s biology and ecology with attendees of all ages and levels of knowledge. It was amazing to watch peoples’ surprise learning the tiny ephyra become the large, preserved jellyfish in less than a year. There was also a particularly nice moment sharing of experiences of neurodivergence with a parent and their child.
The only major unexpected hurdle across the event was during setup Friday morning. I did not plan for high winds, and we scrambled to find sandbags prior to vehicle access to the site being prohibited. Luckily, Brandwood found First GA Hardware & Marine, Inc. within walking distance (we drove back with 200lbs of sand). Otherwise, there were no issues, however, for future iterations I hope to secure larger amounts of funding. At times it was difficult to occupy the multiple roles necessary across researcher, public engagement officer, producer, and director.
Six months of planning went into making Jellyfish Photo Booth happen. The project was something I wanted to accomplish since first attending the Blessing of the Fleet in 2023. Brandwood was incredibly kind to store the stand equipment for several months in the lead-up, with further thanks to Kimberly Davis of Golden Island International for connecting me with the Darien – McIntosh Chamber of Commerce. In addition to the Festival Funnel Funding scheme, I funded the project via small savings from my studentship stipend alongside part-time teaching and administrative work across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Overall, the project was a grand success, with Chiarelli suggesting our newly formed trio—dubbed The Jelly Jammers by Brandwood—present again next year. Funding dependent, Brandwood and I also discussed bringing the project to the 8th International Jellyfish Blooms Symposium, taking place in Ireland late 2026. I am also in conversation with Falmouth University about presenting an iteration at the July 2025 (Un)sustainable Photography conference.
Jellyfish Photo Booth’s wider impact is situated within the environmental humanities, two principal goals of which are to bridge gaps between art and science and include other knowledge systems (e.g. indigenous, subaltern, local, hobbyist). These considerations influence research practice and dissemination; for example, resulting in arguably more holistic policy and strategy recommendations. They also bring into question meaning-making and authorship processes, blurring lines between the more-than-human and nonhuman.
Gone Jellyballing: Gelatinous Life Sciences in the American South is due for submission January 2026, with the next goal to publish the resulting thesis as an academic monograph.
Matthew Beach
Email: m.j.beach@qmul.ac.uk
School of Geography