IntroductionAs in many countries ar

Introduction
As in many countries around the world, fisheries resources of Thailand are heavily exploited by both large-scale and small-scale fishing activities. Modernization of fishing fleets, gears, and technology took place early in the 1960s, and resulted in the rapid and unplanned expansion of industrialized fishing fleets, especially trawlers (Pauly and Chuenpagdee 2003). Also, similar to the majority of the world’s nations, the small-scale fishing sector in Thailand dominates the fisheries – constituting about 90% of the total fishing households. Small-scale fisheries take place predominantly in coastal waters within 3–5 km from shore, using several gears such as gill nets, traps, and hand-lines. Small-scale fishing can be done without a boat or with a non-powered boat, but mostly it involves uses of outboard powered boats and, to a lesser extent, inboard powered boats with hold capacity of less than 5 gross registered tonnage (GRT).