Offshore fisheries refer to those fishing activities performed within out exclusive economic zone extending from 12 to 200 miles from the baseline. Their production has been maintained at 150-250 thousand tons per annum in recent years. The major fishing methods include trawling, ring net fishing, mackerel purse seine fishing, gill net fishing, longline fishing, light inductive fishing, etc. Their main fishing areas extend to the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, Bashi Channel and the waters off the east coast of Taiwan. Due to the depletion of fisheries resources in the offshore waters in recent years, and coupling with the employment of larger vessels as well as the improvement of both fishing skill and fishing/navigation equipments, offshore tuna longliners tend to move to more distant fishing grounds.

　　During the period between 1991 and 1996, in order to ease the problem of labor shortage, to relieve the pressure of overfishing of resources in the offshore seas and to prevent the use of fishing boats in illegal activities such as smuggling, through appropriation of budgets, the Government implemented a vessel buy-back program, for reducing the number of offshore fishing vessels.