Atlantic Cod Fishery History

Canadian history and use of the Atlantic Cod Fishery In the 1990’s, the Canadian Atlantic Cod fishery suffered a collapse when the populations were extremely overexploited and caused a massive dip in the cod’s biomass. Presently, the populations have still not fully recovered and as a result, the cod fishery is very limited in terms of catch. Thinking back to the collapse, one may wonder what factors contributed to the drop in biomass and if people have changed their outlook on fisheries enough to create a positive effect on the cod’s population? In regards to the factors, I will focus on the lack of proper management, advancements in technologies, and the philosophy of humans on the resource as the key factors of the collapse. Also,
The cod fishery originally started out as a hook and line industry before they were replaced by the cod traps, and later the development of the bottom trawlers and sonar (Hutchings, 1994. Greenpeace, 2009). As a result of the evolving technologies, the catches of cod started growing as well, from 100,000 tonnes in 1805 to 250,000 tonnes in the 1900’s. With the invention of the factory freezers, catches grew even more, reaching the high of 810,000 tonnes in 1968. The increase in catch was having an effect on the annual harvest as by 1977, the harvest was down 80% from the high in 1968. In addition, the spawning group of the cod population was also suffering as its biomass dropped from 1.6 million to 22,000 tonnes in 30 years by 1992 (Hutchings, 1994, p.2128). This drop in spawning may be attributed to the nets of the trawlers being an bad size to allow for sustainability. If the mesh size of the net is too small, then the smaller cod will be caught and not be able to breed in the future. However, if the mesh size is too big, then too many cod could escape and this would not be in the interest of the fisherman. Therefore, to allow for sustainability and economic happiness, the optimal mesh size is needed and some suggest that this size is about 45mm windows (Ovegard, 2011). According to Ovegard, this size allows for optimal retaining of the cod, while reducing the chances of catching smaller cod by 94%. Based on the considerable drop in spawning biomass and “optimal mesh size”, it is very possible that during this time, the fishermen were using mesh far too small and caught a lot of big and small cod without