The coming decade will bring new challenges to marine management, governance and conservation. Understanding people’s relationship with this environment is fundamental for guiding scientists and decision makers. This article deconstructs mental ocean imagery and explores how these images relate to one’s marine value orientations, personal norms, emotional involvement (fear), attitudes toward marine sustainable use of resources, acceptability for ocean use, and pro-environmental behaviours. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire across coastal communities on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. We used a word-association technique to elicit ocean images. Frequency analyses revealed beautiful, fishing, cold, pollution and vast as the most cited images. Through an inductive exploratory content analysis, we identified psychological impression, place identity, utilitarian, environmentalist and naturalist as the main theme dimensions. Correlation analyses found that mental images correlate with the way people feel, think and act toward the ocean. Demographic characteristics had a significant effect on some of the images: psychological impression was higher among women and older generations, whereas naturalist was higher among young people. Environmental related images were higher in urban areas. Findings expanded our knowledge on how people imagine the ocean and shows the ambivalence of human nature (i.e., admiring and fearing the ocean while exploring its vastness and resources and understanding its fragility and decay caused by humans).

未来十年将给海洋管理，治理和保护带来新的挑战。了解人们与这种环境的关系是指导科学家和决策者的基础。本文对精神海洋图像进行了解构，并探讨了这些图像如何与一个人的海洋价值取向，个人规范，情感投入（恐惧），对海洋可持续利用资源的态度，海洋使用的可接受性以及亲环境行为有关。通过自我管理的调查表收集了加拿大纽芬兰岛沿岸社区的数据。我们使用了单词联想技术来获取海洋图像。频率分析显示美丽，垂钓，寒冷，污染和巨大作为引用最多的图像。通过归纳性探索性内容分析，我们确定了心理印象，场所身份，功利主义者，环保主义者和自然主义者是主要主题维度。相关分析发现，心理图像与人们对海洋的感觉，思维和行为方式相关。人口统计学特征对某些图像有显着影响：妇女和老年人中的心理印象较高，而年轻人中的自然主义者较高。环境的相关图像在城市地区较高。发现扩大了我们对人们如何想象海洋的认识，并显示了人性的矛盾性（即在探索海洋的广阔和资源的同时欣赏并惧怕海洋，并了解人类造成的脆弱性和衰败）。