Adrian Cato (she/they) is a PhD student in the Department of African American Studies at Emory University. As a self-proclaimed “queer aquatic Afro-futurist,” she is invested in narrates that present the duality of the ocean—a site of historical trauma for the African Diaspora and a place of Black joy and multi-species kinship. Adrian positions her work among ocean humanists that recognize the ocean's violent and colonized past and its potential as a space of Black imagining. Their research practice centers voices that are marginalized in American maritime and coastal historical memory, highlighting the narrative erasure of U.S.-based island and coastal communities.