Small-scale fisher vulnerability and adaptation

Does type of fishing business (cooperative or noncooperative) matter for individual fisher vulnerability and response to stressors?

Small-scale fishery research has often failed to account for differences in self—governance that influence fisher vulnerability and adaptation. In this study, we looked at how cooperative and non-cooperative self-governance forms shape fisher livelihood vulnerability and adaptation. We used a 2018 baseline survey of 206 fishers with follow-up interviews of a sub-sample of 29 fishers in 2022 and 2023 to examine adaptive capacity at the beginning of the study period; then exposures, sensitivities, adaptations during; and finally, well-being trajectories at the end. Our study shows that collective action, while important, is only one aspect of how different self-governance forms influence fisher vulnerability and adaptation. Self-governance forms also mediate fishers’ access to marine resources, markets, and state support. For example, uneven access to fishing permits produced differentiated sensitivities among cooperative and noncooperative fishers to global market shocks during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to ocean temperature variations associated with the ENSO cycle. Fishers from different self-governance forms also adapted differently to exogenous shocks and stressors in the study period, influenced in part by federal fisheries policy changes that have increased costs and decreased benefits associated with cooperative self-governance forms.