According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), there was a steady increase of fish catches until the middle of the 1990s when the catch began to level off (Fig. 1.1). Recent work by Watson and Pauly (2001) has shown that in reality the total marine catch of fish has been declining by some 10% a year since 1988. The apparent continued increase until the mid1990s was due to inflated catch statistics reported by China, the world’s biggest fishing nation. This was thought to be due to local managers being under pressure to show increased production to meet the goals of a centralized communist economy.