Reply To Le Pape Et Al.: Management Is Key To Preventing Marine Extinctions

Our report (1) examines factors that maintain the profitability of harvesting a population as it declines. Without management, this can incentivize harvesting to extinction (2). Le Pape et al. (3) note that humans have not yet caused many marine extinctions, and argue that harvesting fish populations to complete extinction should be difficult because of the high fecundity of these populations. This argument is intuitive, but the extinction mechanism we examine (1, 2) does not depend directly on the harvested species’ fecundity. High fecundity might indirectly lessen this extinction threat in some cases, but the importance of management in preventing both past and future …