Marine conservation policy and practice has framed artisanal fisheries as being inimical to biodiversity conservation. Such discourses are used to displace artisanal fishers from key fishing grounds. The state prioritizes the coast for capital accumulation through resource extraction, marine biodiversity conservation, and securing territories along national borders. I studied the outcomes of conservation, intensification, and securitization efforts on the coast. I investigated the discursive and material outcomes of how the state’s conception and practice of marine conservation result in a myriad of conflicts that often disproportionately affect artisanal fishing communities and biodiversity.

I conducted long-term interdisciplinary fieldwork in the villages bordering the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park in Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu. I used a combination of mixed-method data collection including fish catch sampling, in-depth interviews, fishing-vessel based surveys, observations and secondary literature. I draw on a political ecology framework that uses power as an analytic to study nature-society relations. In this thesis, I critically examine three types of conflicts: first, between capital-intensive mechanized forms and artisanal fisheries; second, livelihoods and conservation-security nexus and; third, humpback dolphins and artisanal fishers.

Conservation, intensification, and securitization has led to the spatial and technological transformation of artisanal fisheries, alienating fishers from sea spaces that are critical for their livelihoods. Artisanal fisheries’ face acute impacts when subjected to regulatory processes due to their dependence on biophysical variations and ecological conditions of near-shore areas making them a socio-economically vulnerable population. Tropical marine environments have unique features, as opposed to temperate waters, in terms of biodiversity conservation and protecting habitats of critical importance. The state is disadvantaged in marine environments because unlike the terrestrial environment, the fluid and material nature of the sea makes it dynamic in terms of geopolitical and territorial control. How power and politics play out in the fluid and material nature of the sea is essential to the understanding of the political ecology of marine conservation. By highlighting the material nature of the sea, I explore the state’s interventions through its governance and the outcomes on people and wildlife.