Abstract
The planned expansion of wind energy in the North Sea holds significant implications for marine biodiversity. Wind energy infrastructure can enhance biodiversity by providing hard substrates and reef-like habitats or degrade it by disturbing existing benthic habitat. However, it remains unclear what kinds of biodiversity will in practice be enhanced, in whose interest and for what purpose. To assess the effects of offshore wind energy parks on biodiversity, a range of new monitoring technologies are being developed, including monitoring technologies that incorporate environmental DNA (eDNA). However, which biodiversities eDNA sampling strategies can observe starts with their design; with different assumptions, priorities, material affordances, and ways of knowing biodiversity inscribed into material sampling technologies and their deployment. Using a framework to examine processes of inscription, this paper explores how assumptions and priorities, conditioned by the material affordances of eDNA, affect the design of a monitoring strategy assessing biodiversity enhancement. We show that the process of inscription constitutes a form of de facto governance, whereby the design of an eDNA monitoring strategy in the present shapes how biodiversity is governed in the future. We conclude that inscription is an open-ended process that allows for reflexivity on the socio-material dimensions of monitoring technologies such as eDNA, providing an opportunity to (re) imagine ways that biodiversity can be inscribed, opening up how it is conceptualised, measured and enhanced.