The present paper pursues several objectives: to understand the concrete processes and modalities of capitalist penetration into the Third-World fisheries; to assess the comparative role and strategies of the State and private initiative with regard to the development of this sector; to highlight and explain the position occupied agents of the small scale sector in this expansionary move; and to identify the main factors determining the choice of organisational forms. The perspective of this paper is historical-theoretical and the guiding theoretical principles are drawn from this branch of economics increasingly known as the “New Institutional Economics”