This paper examines the crucial role that social and political institutions in a local community, Moree, and its migration network within and beyond Ghana (where it is often connected economically and institutionally to a wider Ghanaian migrant community) play in fishermen and traders’ ability to pursue migration as a strategy. It is argued that the outcome of a spatially extensive but institutionally efficient migratory production system such as the Fante fisheries, is an extremely flexible utilization of resources, which is well adapted to the West African biological, economic and political environment. Furthermore, it is suggested that because of this flexibility, Ghanian canoe fisheries is a particularly resilient system which explains its extraordinary ability to adapt to and absorb biological resource fluctuations, population increase, and economic and political shocks in the region.