Coastal fisheries are still dominant in the major fishing countries. Shrimp are a main target of these fisheries, with the banana prawn as the most valuable species. While shrimp exports from capture fisheries have been relatively constant, if not declining, those from aquaculture have increased and overtaken them. The preferred cultured species is the tiger prawn, P. monodon, due to its sturdiness and relatively large individual size. Some resources are still lightly exploited in some Indonesia waters and in a limited part of Vietnam waters, and there could be potential for further development.
Tunas are an important export commodity for the area.
Much of the coastal tuna catch comes from other species and is for domestic consumption. Despite the continued increase of catches in the major fishing countries, strong indications of overfishing exist for some species in coastal waters. For instance, the abundance of demersal fish stocks in the Gulf of Thailand in the early 1990s was only one tenth of the 1960s level when the trawl fisheries started. The shrimp resources in the Arafura Sea seem to have experienced increased fishing pressure in the 1990s, with an increase in the number of small trawlers operating in the northern part of the Arafura Sea. Coastal tuna resources in the Philippines waters continued to decline, which encouraged expansion of tuna fishing in Indonesian waters through bilateral arrangement.