A cover story: fisheries may drive stocks to extinction

The cover of the 1993 reprint of Beverton and Holt's book bears a diagram, its significance previously unrecognized, that expresses extinction due to fishing. This paper traces the concept to self-regenerating yield models in their 1957 book, its numerical development therein far in advance of its r einvention 30 years later. Local extinction constitutes a critical impact o f fisheries on aquatic ecosystems that has been too often downplayed by fis heries science.