Waving or Drowning: An Exploration of Adaptive Strategies Amongst Fishing Households and Implications for Wellbeing Outcomes

Social adaptation is often touted as a desirable and necessary response to continued decline in the fisheries sector, however little is currently understood about the impacts of adaptive strategies on people's broader sense of ‘wellbeing’, or how the spread of impacts affect people in different ways. This article draws from research in Northern Ireland to explore the types of adaptation strategising that takes place within fishing households, and to specifically address how such strategies interplay with the wellbeing of people affected. We demonstrate some of the hard choices that arise through becoming adaptive, and discuss how the costs of adaptation are sometimes disproportionality born by particular individuals, especially women. We argue that greater consideration of the impacts of adaptation on wellbeing can give useful insights into why some people thrive, whilst others struggle, and can point to opportunities to strengthen both resilient and wellbeing outcomes.