Fishers, like other resource users, follow a range of adaptation strategies in response to environmental or economic stresses. This paper examines variation in fishers' adaptation strategies in the presence of local and regional institutions. In the context of marine socio-ecological systems in Tamil Nadu, India, I examine the effects of village and district level variation in governance structure on a common group of users (fishermen). I find that, in the absence of local or regional constraints, fishers adapt to changing conditions by changing effort. In situations of legal pluralism, where regional and local level fisheries management rules conflict, fishers defer to local level institutions first at the expense of state management regulations, as anticipated by previous studies. However, local institutions may avoid placing behavioral constraints on fishing, leading again to adaptation through the increase of effort instead of the promotion of rule-following behavior. Conversely, where local level institutions have weak claims over users' collective action (e.g., in the case of a heterogeneous village), district level regulations are successfully enforced, constraining fishers' adaptation responses. In this latter case, fishers resort to gear selectivity in the presence of district level regulations which place temporal restrictions on effort. This suggests that while village level heterogeneity may be detrimental to the establishment of successful local institutions governing commons management, it may actually enable the successful implementation of district level, resource management regulations.
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