This study seeks to comprehend management from the perspective of a fishing community located in the Pearl Lagoon basin of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. In order to undertake these questions, the study focused the research in Marshall Point – an indigenous and Afro-descendant fishing community – located on the west margins of the Pearl Lagoon basin. Faced with still undefined property rights, internal conflicts over resource use, the exhaustion of the fishing stocks, and the continuous marginalization from decision-making of relevant policies (i.e. design of management plans, land demarcation process), fishermen from Marshall Point have developed a variety of mechanisms with the purpose of coping with vulnerability and mounting poverty. These mechanisms include, though are not limited to: i) strategizing towards securing land and aquatic rights; ii) shifting labor from fishing to agricultural production with the aim of securing food supplies; iii) organizing a fishing cooperative aimed at accessing national funding for fisheries’ development; and finally, iv) implementing informal community-based actions to locally manage the resources of the Lagoon. However, as the paper would argue, these mechanisms to be effective in the long run require sound governance in the area – which includes (though is not limited to) a proactive central state as well as purposeful local and regional authorities. Internally, strategies to overcome poverty in which some families have embarked upon (e.g., overfishing, cattle rising) might run the risk of further marginalizing and impoverishing vulnerable groups (elders and women) within the community.