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The yellow clam fishery in Uruguay provides a longstanding case study of co-management in small-scale fisheries. This paper employs a participatory approach to examine the co-management experience in the yellow clam fishery and distil numerous lessons for implementing the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines). There were three main findings in the study. First, from the perspective of the fishers, co-management has proven successful in advancing gender equity, human rights and subjective well-being within the fishery, which align with the SSF Guidelines. Second, co-management is likely most effective at achieving the goals of the SSF Guidelines when it is accompanied by wide-scale structural changes in legislation and efforts to improve its coherence across areas of jurisdiction. Third, the nature and rate of socio-economic and ecological change currently being experienced - and which is expected to continue - requires a significant amount of flexibility in co-management arrangements in order for them to deliver on the intended outcomes of the SSF Guidelines. These findings help further the implementation of the SSF Guidelines through co-management in the yellow clam fishery, and serve as a learning platform for scaling up good practices to other small-scale fisheries of Uruguay. Additionally, the findings can also be applied in other regions dealing with similar issues in the management and governance of small-scale fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]