Navigating receding waters: Small-scale fisheries and evolving boundaries of the Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is undergoing profound socio-environmental transformations, including declining water levels, rising temperatures, and biodiversity loss. With the sea turning into land at a rate of several meters per year, the retreating shoreline offers a visible sign of shrinking space for fishers and of the long-standing fluidity of land–water boundaries in the Caspian. This article explores how small-scale fishers along the Azerbaijani Caspian coast imagine and adapt to these changes. Drawing on exploratory qualitative research, we show that fishers adapt through collective practices, including pooling resources, sharing information, and extending their fishing movements into deeper waters. Rather than increasing conflict, these practices help sustain cooperation and enable fishers to navigate increasingly restricted and depleted fishing grounds. The article makes three contributions to debates on marine spaces and climate adaptation. First, by examining environmental, ethical, and political imaginaries, the article shows that fishers’ adaptation practices are shaped not only by material pressures but also by moral obligations, collective identities, and perceptions of regulations and marine governance. Second, adaptation emerges as a spatially negotiated process structured by informal territorial arrangements and ethical boundaries that determine access to fishing grounds. Third, the article makes an empirical contribution by centering on an understudied maritime space in post-socialist Eurasia, specifically a context of shoreline retreat as opposed to sea-level rise.