Sea Change

In her new book, activist Julia Watson champions indigenous technologies as strategies for coastal resilience, sustainability, and common sense

- KATE GUADAGNINO

Julia Watson was 11 when, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez ship spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, killing scores of animals and gravely impacting the region’s Indigenous communities. She can still remember sitting in her Brisbane, Australia, home watching television footage of scientists washing birds with household detergent. That disaster confirmed her sense that, she says, “there was something humanity wasn’t doing for the oceans that we should have been doing,” prompting her to announce her plans to become a marine biologist. Ultimately, Watson, now based in Brooklyn, took a different path, studying landscape architecture. But her practice and new book, Lo–TEK Water (Taschen, June 2025), show that same understanding of place and instinct for problem-solving.