For generations, cod fishing was a way of life in Newfoundland and Labrador, the easternmost province in Canada. But in 1992, after cod stocks in the north Atlantic plummeted, the federal government imposed a moratorium on cod fishing. It was to last for 32 years until it was lifted in June 2024.
The decision was controversial and in this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast we speak to a fisheries expert to shed light on what’s happened. It offers a cautionary tale for those politicians trying to balance the complex demands of protecting ecosystems that also support substantial economies.
Newfoundland is a sleepy place with colourful wooden houses and icebergs that pass by its northern shores in early summer. The island is perched out in the north Atlantic near the grand banks, some of the most prolific fishing waters in the world.
Fishing has been the backbone of the economy for centuries, and so when the Canadian government imposed a cod moratorium in 1992 it had a huge impact, with an estimated 30,000 people in Newfoundland and Labrador out of work overnight. Some cod fishing was permitted in inshore waters from the late 1990s in boats less than 20 metres long, but all commercial offshore trawler fishing was prohibited.
A number of factors led to the decline of the cod population, but the most significant was overfishing, explains Tyler Eddy, a research scientist in fisheries science at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
When they started to put the brakes on the fishing it was already too late, the population had been already reduced to a low level.
The expectation was that the moratorium would last for a few years, enough for the cod stocks to recover. But that didn’t happen, explained Eddy.
That was one of the big surprises of the moratorium was that we stopped fishing and fish didn’t come back.
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Moving goalposts
There was a little uptick in 2016, but the recovery stalled. Then, in 2023, a new historical dataset tracking how many baby cod made it to adulthood back in the boom years of the 1960s was introduced into the annual assessment of the cod stocks.
The effect, explains Eddy, who was one of the scientists involved in the decision, was to reduce what experts believed the cod population could recover to. It also lowered the reference points for whether a stock is in the critical, cautious or healthy zone.
It would be as if a car was doing 80km/hour and the speed limit used to be 60km/hour, so it was over the speed limit. Now the speed limit is changing to 80km so the car is actually doing within the speed limit. The car hasn’t changed speed at all, it’s just the reference point has changed.
And this is what happened: the 2024 assessment of cod stocks using this new dataset put cod in the cautious zone, rather than the critical zone.
In June, the Canadian government used this shift to justify lifting the moratorium. It increased the total allowable catch for the year from 13,000 to 18,000 tonnes and reopened some cod fishing in offshore waters in 2024, including to some international trawlers.
It’s since emerged that this decision went against the scientific advice of officials within Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the department which manages fishing. They had recommended maintaining the existing level of total allowable catch and continuing to limit it to inshore fishers.
A spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada told The Conversation that it makes fishery decisions informed by the best available science and a range of other factors, including socioeconomic considerations.
Newfoundland is now waiting until early 2025 when the next stock assessment of the Atlantic cod takes place, to see what the impact will be. Eddy explained how finely balanced the situation is:
Even though we are in the cautious zone, we’re just barely in the cautious zone … we’ve just barely crossed this threshold, and there’s actually a probability that we could still be within the critical zone. And if we look at the projections for the next three years, I think there’s a two-thirds to three-quarter chance that we’re going to end up back in the critical zone.
Listen to the full episode on The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also includes an introduction from Harris Kuemmerle, environment and energy editor at The Conversation Canada.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Gemma Ware and Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.
Newsclips in this episode from CBC News NL – Newfoundland and Labrador, CTV Your Morning and CBC News.
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