Recent literature has highlighted the exceptional importance of forage fish, which include some of the largest fisheries in the world and produce a sizeable share of the global wild marine fish catch (1). Forage species play an essential and valuable supporting role within marine ecosystems by serving as prey for larger species (2, 3). These findings underscore the importance of (i) furthering understanding of the determinants of forage fish collapses, and (ii) of devising exploitation strategies that will maintain their crucial ecological and economic roles. Essington et al. (4) significantly advance understanding on both counts, applying novel methods to uncover fishing’s fingerprint in regulating population fluctuations and demonstrating the effectiveness of a simple remedy to prevent collapses.