Large bodied species are especially vulnerable to fishing in mixed fisheries. Their effective conservation requires predictions of sensitivity and exposure to fishing mortality which are hard to make when most of these species are rare and their population dynamics have not been described. A new method, and case study application, for assessing species sensitivity and conservation reference points with widely available life history data is presented. The method is used to conduct a risk assessment of fishing impacts on biodiversity, and to provide a preliminary assessment of the extent of tradeoffs between fishery yields and conservation status of all species making up the demersal fish community in a north-east Atlantic ecosystem. However the method could support rapid risk assessment in most regions since it only requires taxonomic lists and estimates of maximum length. In the case study assessment, given current levels of fishing mortality all of the elasmobranchs and 27% of the teleosts are potentially at risk. Depending on the relative mortality rates affecting commercially targeted species and species of conservation concern, up to 65% of the potential yield of commercially important species may have to be forgone to avoid conservation thresholds of all large fish.
