  Present knowledge about the marine ecosystem on the Norwegian Continental
Shelf towards the Arctic is sparse. These areas are vast, remote and subject to
harsh weather conditions. We report from a three-year case study of an ongoing
effort for real-time, subsea environmental monitoring by an oil and gas
operator. The facts about the subsea environment are anything but neutral; they
are intrinsically caught up with the material means by which they are known.
The marine ecosystem is monitored through a network of sensors, communication
links, visualisation and analysis tools. Our concept of nested materiality
draws heavily on perspectives in sociomateriality but highlights (i) the
distributed and interconnected infrastructure of the material means (as opposed
to artefact-centric) and (ii) in-the-making (as opposed to black-boxed)
technology.
