Because, in general, the economies of Southeast Asian countries are "developing", policy-makers generally assume that the fisheries sector also needs to be "developed" through soft loans, tax rebates, construction of ports, etc. This contribution shows that such classical fisheries development methods are no longer appropriate for fisheries in the ASEAN countries, where overfishing is the rule rather than the exception. A rationale and some strategies for rolling back excessive fishing effort in over-fished areas are briefly presented.