An index of economic vulnerability is developed and used with a more conventional measure of income poverty to explore vulnerability and chronic poverty in isolated rural communities. The method is applied to data from remote rural fishing–farming communities in Congo. The analysis highlights the high vulnerability of full-time fisherfolk and identifies mobility as a key factor increasing vulnerability. In line with other recent economic research, our work also shows that households can remain highly vulnerable even when their incomes lie well above the average local income. These different results are consistent with the more specialised literature on small-scale fisheries, confirming the robustness of the analysis proposed in this paper.