Abstract

When resource availability declines, small-scale producers adapt to the change in various ways. Understanding how fishermen make decisions and adapt to decreasing availability of resources is important for designing and implementing successful fisheries policy. The social relationships among fishermen are one factor that influences how individual decisions are made, as it is through such relationships that knowledge and information are transmitted. This paper presents the results of a study that examines how social resources correlate with the adaptive strategies of a group of small-scale fishermen who are experiencing resource scarcity. The paper focuses specifically on social networks as one such social resource and examines whether measuring social networks can accurately predict the adaptive strategies employed by the group of fishermen during one lobster season. The study worked with the 124 members of a lobster fishing cooperative on the north coast of the Yucatan, Mexico. Employing a social network analysis methodology, full network data was collected on the social relationships of each cooperative member. The adaptive strategy of each fisherman was determined through interviews and the collection of daily production data for one full fishing season, and then broadly classified as intensification or diversification. The analysis shows that among the population under study, social networks represent one factor that correlates with the employment of adaptive strategies, a finding that leads to a better understanding of decision-making among small-scale fishermen.

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