Adaptations and well-being: Gulf of Alaska fishing families in a changing landscape

Over the last three decades, fishing families in the Gulf of Alaska have adapted to numerous multifaceted conditions in response to near constant flux in stocks, markets, governance regimes, and broader sociocultural and environmental changes. Based on an analysis of seven focus groups held across Gulf of Alaska fishing communities, this study explores the variety of strategies that families across the Gulf have employed to adapt to changing conditions from the 1980s to the present day. Furthermore, the study examines how those strategies have evolved over time to accommodate cumulative effects and synergisms. While families continue to employ long-standing adaptation strategies of fisheries portfolio diversification and increasing effort, they are also integrating new adaptations into their framework as changing management systems, demographics, and technologies shift how choices about adaptations are made. This study also demonstrates how adaptations have implicit intra- and inter-personal well-being tradeoffs within families that, while potentially allowing for sustained livelihoods, may undermine other values that individuals and families derive from fishing.