Southeast Asia is the world centre of mangrove development. Not only is there a greater diversity of species, but the areas covered by mangrove forests are more extensive. This paper is concerned with the utilization of the mangrove forests in Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia (along the west coast), which is bounded by that part of the Indian Ocean called the Andaman Sea. The Burmese mangrove forests are probably very similar to these, but they will not be treated in this paper.