Estonia is a maritime nation. At least this seems so if one looks at Estonia on a map. The lifestyle of a shore-dwelling people, however, is not visibly widespread, and coastal fisheries are rather unevenly developed. Nonetheless, it could not be said that coastal fishing is defunct. Naturally, along with the deterioration in the condition of fish stocks, fishers’ incomes, too, have declined over the past couple of decades, and the popularity of coastal fisheries has been low. As in many sectors of the economy where extensive privatization occurred during the reforms of the 1990s, coastal fisheries, too, has travelled a road of extensive reforms. Since the turn of the century, however, attention by the state to coastal fisheries has been increasing gradually, including several steps taken by the Ministry of Agriculture to support coastal fisheries through various development programmes, predominantly co-financed by the EU. During this programming period, 2007-2013, of the European Fisheries Fund, we decided to establish a stand-alone measure for the development of coastal fisheries in co-operation with fisheries organizations. Perhaps what is most important about this measure is that we have delegated the approval of both the strategy for the use of the programme instruments and of individual projects to the fisheries areas. Rather painlessly, local action groups were formed by more active local fishers, non-profit associations, and local government representatives.