Beyond Our Original Horizons: the Tropicalization of Beverton and Holt

The extension into tropical areas of Beverton and Holt's yield per recruit approach for stock assessment represents a straightforward case of normal science, the common Kuhnian counterpart to his much rarer paradigm shifts. It is shown that the normal science which, in recent decades, has led to new methods for estimating growth, mortality and other statistics required for yield per recruit analyses in data-sparse environments, has not only enriched fisheries science and aquatic biology as a whole, but has also contributed to identify the limitations of the single-species research programme originally defined by Beverton and Holt. The most likely prospect for that programme, in the tropics and elsewhere, is to become a component of the multispecies, or rather ecosystem approach that is emerging, and to which Beverton and Holt will have contributed many of the concepts, and much of the rigour.