"If codfish forsake us, what then would we
hold?
What carry to Bergen to barter for gold?" - Peter Daas
Trumpet of Nordland, Norway, 1735
"Will cod come back?" - Dr. Janet Crane
Coastal Aesthetics Summer School, Newport, RI 1997
The first speaker this morning talked about New England Fisheries. Dr. Janet Crane of Bunker Hill Community College described her experiences attending meetings of the New England Fisheries Management Council, and showed photographs of fishing boats and fish processing plants in Gloucester, MA. The fishermen of Gloucester go out after Atlantic cod (as well as haddock and yellowtail flounder). These are groundfish; they feed on the bottom. They're cold water fish, important in Atlantic Canada and New England as well as Norway and Iceland. Janet's talk concerned New England fisheries, but I've gathered a bunch of links on the Scandinavian fisheries as well.
Cod stocks in the North Atlantic are severely depleted because of overfishing. There is no question that the cause is overfishing, but there is still debate! While we debate, the cod continues to decline. Government measures undertaken supposedly to stop the overfishing actually resulted in too many boats and too much technology going after fewer and fewer fish. The catch increased because of the number of boats and the new technologies but the cod population declined. Where's the environmental movement when you need 'em? Where's the public outcry?
Janet made the point that people are not interested in fish. We lack visual images of cod and haddock the way we have them of sharks or whales. Sargun Tont commented that cod "just aren't cuddly". What to do? I suggested to Janet that what we need is "Cod World" a total cod theme park. From there Howard, Janet, Yuriko and I came up with ideas for cod action figures, a cod movie with McDonald's tie-ins to sell the action figures, a salmon board game (we got carried away)...
Since it's highly unlikely I'll get Sea Grant money to create Cod World, I've created a little virtual cod world right here in my journal.
Try out this nifty Norwegian cod fisheries simulator. ECONMULT is a fleet model covering the most important Norwegian fisheries of the Barents Sea.
While we're on that side of the Atlantic you can read a Paper presented at the 84th ICES Statutory meeting 27 Sept.-4 Oct. 1996, Reykjavik, Iceland. Or you can visit the North Atlantic fisheries college at Scalloway in the Shetlands.
People have known about the decline in cod fisheries due to overfishing since at least 1890. That's not a typo. The debate has gone on and on and on on both sides of the Atlantic. The debate rages on hot and heavy as the fisheries collapse. People blame climate change, seals, anything but overfishing. When the debate's not focusing on whether the fisheries are really depleted, it's focusing on who gets to catch what few cod are left. Cod is such a sensitive topic it can even result in press censorship.
Some Background Reading
what's a cod?
Cod, an essay by Marguerite Ragnow
Cod : The Biography of a Fish That Changed the World - I'm reading this now and can hardly put it down to work on "cod world". It's that good.
Fishes IV
Gadus Associates : Sources of Fisheries Information 2
where would the cod be if they were there?
U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank
Cod and Haddock on Georges Bank
Fewer Fish on Georges Bank
The Crisis
Cod
Collapses and GLOBEC
THE
FISHERIES CRISIS IN THE NORTHWEST ATLANTIC
GROUNDFISH
FISHERIES
Strip-Mining
the Oceans
The Debate
Canada
Project
Censored Canada:93-9: an article about cod fisheries'
collapse due to Canadian government mismanagement.
Enforcement
of Canada/USA Boundary - Hague Line
Fisheries
Mismanagement: The Case of the North Atlantic Cod
(Book)
Groundfish
Management Plan for Atlantic Canada
Tobin
Takes Cautious Approach To Recent Northern Cod Find
USA
American
Memory - historic cod fisheries info
American Factory
Trawler Association Seattle, WA on what they describe as
THE GREENPEACE DECEPTION: Misleading the public about the
North Pacific groundfish fishery and U.S. factory trawler
fleet
Congress
Fights Over Magnuson Act
Joe
Brancaleone chairs the New England Fishery Management
Council
Fishing
and Jobs
Fisheries
That Work: Sustainability Through Community-Based
Management , commissioned by The David Suzuki
Foundation
International
Symposium Examines Climate Change Effects on North Atlantic
Cod Stocks
Marine
Fisheries Links: Fisheries Management
Responses
of fish populations to human influences
Reversing
the course of destruction by Anne E Platt
Seals,
Cod, Ecology and Mythology (IMMA Inc.)
And just as Mark Kurlansky relates all events in the history of the world to cod, I must relate all events to Rhode Island. What does the cod decline mean to Rhode Island? Rhode Island's fishing industry could be seriously hurt by Georges Bank closure, even though Rhode Island fishermen don't work in Georges Bank waters. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone... Closure of Georges Bank has increased pressure on the fisheries of the Gulf of Maine. Pressure on the Gulf of Maine increases pressure on Rhode Island's so-called underutilized species fisheries. The beat goes on.
Home