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Abstract
This research investigates the vulnerabilities facing commercial fishing communities as they work to maintain livelihoods based on and around the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. It focuses on how recent initiatives in Maryland to involve watermen in heritage tourism projects address these vulnerabilities and how watermen are choosing to participate in the program. Additionally, it investigates the watermen characteristics associated with success in heritage tourism ventures and if participation in heritage tourism challenge traditional harvesting-based livelihoods and identities. This research pursues these lines of inquiry through semi-structured interviews and ethnography and concludes that heritage tourism is a means through which fishing communities can increase their resilience.