The countries of the Gulf of Thailand—Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam—have a heavily exploited resource base; indeed, increasing demand for marine resources has led to resource over exploitation. At the same time, coastal habitats in the region have been negatively impacted by a growth in aquaculture production (from around 603,941tonnes in1950 to 26.592 million tonnes in1996, then to 45.924 million tonnes in 2004). Thailand, for example, has lost about 64.3 percent of its mangrove areas to coastal aqua culture [4] and Cambodia’s mangrove areas have been similarly affected [5]. Fishery over-exploitation and loss of coastal habitat suggest the need for new approaches to fisheries and coastal management. One such approach is actually an old one: the Gulf of Thailand has had experiences with community-based fisheries management, at least to some extent, for a very longtime. However, a community -focused system has yet to fully develop, due both to a lack of legal controls and the reality that it is not easy to produces uccessful results for such programs in poverty- stricken countries.When people are focused on the food and money they need for their day today survival, conservation of natural resources for the future becomes less important. Never the less,the support of international