Over the past few years, supplies of abalone from fisheries around the world have been gradually declining, whilst supplies from farms have been rapidly increasing. Illegal exploitation of abalone is still a problem in many parts of the world, although there is some evidence that some countries are taking steps to reduce poaching. The total world supply of abalone from all sources in 2010 was about 77,000 mt and this is expected to increase to more than 97,000 mt by 2012. This increase is largely due to increased farm production in China. To date, this has not had a very large effect on world markets because much of the Chinese production is consumed within China.