Book excerpt: On a global scale, more than 40 million people make their living working directly at sea as fishers, seafarers, in aquaculture or seabed-mining, or related occupations such as dockworkers, shipbuilding, logistics, maritime administration, secondary branches of shipping, marine tourism and other maritime professions. The study of maritime labour and occupations is still under-represented in the social sciences and humanities. With the present volume, we attempt to fill this gap by representing recent research on maritime professions from a sociological perspective drawing on a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and subject matters.