Addressing livelihood vulnerability by small-scale marine fishermen of Kanyakumari district in India themselves is of the focus in this research article. Livelihood stressors faced by these fishermen lead to a lot of uncertainties while they are striving to meet their financial and social needs through fishing occupation.  Therefore, an investigation was made to examine whether the fishermen cope with such occupational challenges and why some strategies are used as a mechanism by the fishermen to resist certain stressors. Problem-based coping is found to be helpful for fishermen when they need to change their situation by removing stressful thing or reducing the level of that stress from their fishing occupation. It is observed that younger fishermen (18-25 years of age) cope better than elder fishermen (26-45 years) and (46-60 years). It is also observed that fishermen with higher education are dealing better with the occupational problems (livelihood stress) than the fishermen with lower education. As the stress on fishermen due to livelihood issues increases, the coping strategies of fishermen do increase.  It is the ‘fishing efforts’ of fishermen found to be the coping strategy, having highest statistical significance of all other coping strategies, used to counter the challenges posed by the livelihood stressors. Hence, marine fishermen of Kanyakumari are found with the abilities to resist the livelihood stressors than just remaining vulnerable to the occupational challenges. 

Keywords:      Livelihood Stressors, Coping Strategies, Fishing Effort, Fishing Management, Technological Adoption, Fishermen Collective, Human Capital