‘Thinking like a fish’: adaptive strategies for coping with vulnerability and variability emerging from a relational engagement with kob

Based on ethnographic fieldwork amongst a group of commercial handline fishers in the town of Stilbaai in South Africa’s southern Cape region, this paper presents a range of flexible, adaptive and evolving strategies through which fishers negotiate constantly shifting variability in weather patterns, fish stocks, fisheries policies, and economic conditions. These variabilities constitute a diverse set of vulnerabilities to which fishers must respond in order to sustain their livelihoods. In this context, the act of ‘thinking like a fish’ on the part of the fishers provides them with an effective means of adapting to variability and uncertainty. Findings of ethnographic research in 2010-11 suggest that a number of the fishers who participated in the research actively work towards achieving a balance between profit and sustainability. ‘Thinking like a fish’ is an embodied, interactive way of knowing that emerges from interactions between fishers and fish, offering an ethical and ecological outlook which is a valuable resource for fisheries and conservation management in the region. We suggest that the deeply embodied interactional component of ‘thinking like a fish’ results from a desire to understand the life world of fish and to think from their perspective in order to more effectively target them while sustaining the species and ecosystem.