Small-scale, family fishing enterprises manage to persist despite the difficult economic and ecological changes and disruptions they almost constantly have experienced during the past several decades. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic and historical research in the Bigouden region of France, this paper asks why and how family-based fishing enterprises continue in the face of what seem to be overwhelming odds. This is accomplished through an evaluation of the social reproduction of family-based fishing enterprises in the Bigouden region of France. Specific attention is paid to: (1) the factors that contribute to the maintenance of boat ownership from one generation to the next generation, and (2) an exploration of the extent to which boat ownership in one generation can be linked to a family’s continued participation in the fishery in subsequent generations. The paper concludes by arguing that continuation in the fishery during a period of overall declining employment has been contingent upon the degree of vessel ownership in the preceding generation.