This article introduces the special issue on ‘Understanding Blue Spaces’ which examines relationships between blue spaces, sport, physical activity, and wellbeing. The articles progress conversations across humanities, social sciences and inter-disciplinary areas of research on diverse sporting practices, that span local to trans-national contexts. This collection offers new insights into politics, possibilities, and problems of the role of blue spaces in our wellbeing—individually, socially, and ecologically. In addition to outlining the 10 articles in the SI, which include ocean swimming, surfing, sailing/yachting, and waka ama paddling, we contextualize this work, discussing key thematic areas both across these papers, and in the wider interdisciplinary body of work on blue spaces, wellbeing, and sport. Specifically, we outline the role of physical activities and leisure practices in how we access, understand, experience, and develop relationships to seas and oceans, as well as to self, places and communities of human and non-human others. We also discuss the ways in which particular bodies, individuals, and communities (human and more-than-human) are marginalized or excluded, and the need for understanding concepts such as wellbeing, place, and self beyond dominant European traditions. This SI highlights how localised experiences of blue spaces can be, while emphasising the need to recognize diverse cultural, economic, geographic, sociodemographic, and political factors that contribute to a disconnect with, or exclusion from blue spaces, impacting who can use blue spaces, how they can be used, how they can be researched, and how power is reproduced and contested.

本文介绍有关“了解蓝色空间”的特刊，该文章探讨了蓝色空间，运动，体育活动和幸福感之间的关系。这些文章促进了跨人文，社会科学和跨学科研究领域各种对话的对话，涉及本地到跨国环境。该收藏集对政治，可能性以及蓝色空间在我们的福利中（个人，社会和生态方面）的作用问题提供了新的见解。除了概述SI中的10篇文章外，还包括海洋游泳，冲浪，帆船/游艇和和歌舞划桨时，我们将这项工作进行了背景讨论，讨论了这些论文中的主要主题领域，以及有关蓝色空间，福祉和体育的更广泛的跨学科工作领域。具体来说，我们概述了体育活动和休闲实践在我们如何访问，理解，体验和发展与海洋以及与人类，非人类他人的自我，场所和社区的关系中的作用。我们还将讨论如何将特定的身体，个人和社区（人类及非人类）边缘化或排斥，以及超越欧洲主流传统来理解诸如幸福感，地位和自我之类的概念的需求。该SI强调了如何实现蓝色空间的本地化体验，同时强调了认识到各种文化，经济，地理，社会人口统计学，