Fishing about and about fishing

 

The EU fisheries managers are worried about the state of Europe's cod resources, and rightly so. But the remedy that is all about fishing limitation, they have come forth with, is quite resented by the industry. Catch less or not at all ­ promise the managers ­ and the cod will return soon.

Well, they should keep a wary eye on what has been happening at the other side of the Atlantic. Less than half-an-year ago, the Canadian government banned all commercial and recreational cod fishing off its Atlantic Provinces ­ thus hammering in perhaps the last nail in the coffin of the groundfish industry, once worth billions of dollars. The first moratorium of the early 1990s, didn't help, and scientists still couldn't say when the northern cod stocks might recover, but now they admitted the role of environmental changes.

Since the 1400s, first Basque, then English fishermen have fished rich resources of cod in the Northwest Atlantic, the collapse of which over two decades ago was ascribed to overfishing by trawlers that since the 1960s had been sweeping non-stop Grand Banks and other fishing grounds off East Canada. Presently, both fishermen and managers are perplexed and disturbed by the lack of recovery, because when cod fishing was halted in the early 1990s, the common expectation was that it would quickly recover. These expectations proved unrealistic.

Last February, a little publicised 10-day meeting of some 70 Canadian Government's, and other Canadian, American, British and Icelandic scientists, as well as fisheries managers and a number of people from the fishing industry, took place in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Although initially aimed at cod-stocks assessment, half of the meeting was devoted to the question why cod stocks had not recovered. The meeting suggested a causation system comprising the following main components:

Temperatures: Labrador, northern Grand Banks, and Gulf of St. Lawrence's cod stocks that live in colder waters are less productive than other Atlantic cod. During at least the first half of the 1990s, the ocean climate was unusually cold, hence conditions particularly unfavourable to the stocks' productivity and recovery.

Growth and survival: Harsh hydrographic conditions of the 1990s affected fish growth and survival. When the moratoria were applied to cod stocks, most of the fish were small for their age and, generally, in poor condition, with little chance to survive the cold months and critical life stages. Their condition was particularly low after spawning, which caused high mortality in some of the stocks.

Predation: Enter predators, in particular the swelling populations of seals. The scientists estimated that the seals alone killed enough cod to have affected its recovery. In addition, especially in the Gulf, burgeoning populations of mackerel and herring have taken to cod eggs and larvae.

Reproduction: The collapsed stocks of the early 1990s were composed of a high proportion of first time spawning fish, and very few older spawners. Since fish spawning for the first time are weak spawners, with only a few of the older and better spawners the whole cod stock has lost most of its reproduction potential.

Due to continuing high mortality, the low reproduction persisted. In some cases, either the size of the spawning groups or of the spawning area has shrunk, or both. So, the spawning biomass of cod stocks is now very low, and recruitment much lower than that in the past, which perseveres low production.

Fishing: Catches, however much below those of the 1970s and 1980 contributed significantly to mortality. The suspected under-reporting, small fish bycatch and outright poaching in both the commercial and recreational cod fisheries haven't help either.

Accordingly, and in addition to fishing, environmental conditions and increased predation, along with poor reproduction, represent the main factors that simultaneously or in turn have been causing the poor growth, reproduction, and survival, as well as high mortalities among the northern cod. In combination with the current low abundance and productivity, these factors are impeding the generation of sufficient numbers of young fish needed to recover the cod populations to previous levels. Altogether, the participants suggested that a prompt recovery of the northern cod is not in the cards.

"These news is old news - says Dr. Gary Sharp, a California-based physiological ecologist-oceanographer ­ but, who reads 'old' literature, or wants to argue with the neo-equilibrium computer modellers about their assumptions? Thus, we're getting the continuing 'crisis management'. The story of cod collapse is a story of lack of understanding and/or considering the "Cod Cycle", the recent decade's ocean temperatures, the cod susceptibility to colder environments, and the over-growth of the fishing industry imposed by Canadian politicians during the 1980s".

Could it be that the Canadian management knew nothing about cod's historical ups and downs? FAO described such fluctuations in halibut, sardines, cod, and many groundfish already in 1983, in the last Chapter of the "Proceedings of the Expert Consultation to Examine Changes in Distribution and Abundance of Neritic Fishes", (Modelling Fisheries,What Was The Question?) authored by J.Csirke, S.Garcia and G.Sharp, and later in the FAO Fisheries Technical Report (410) by L.Klyashtorin, (.pdf download) that shows past and projected cod, herring, and other major fisheries' fluctuating production.

"The bottom line ­ says Dr.Sharp - is that most of these cyclical fish stocks take more than a decade to recover from low- abundance periods. The mystical expectation that longer lived fishes like cods will somehow 'pop back up' if left alone for a season or two is a denial of reality".

And the ever-changing fishery ecosystem kept deriding the hapless Canadian fisheries management. Soon after the cod collapse a lucrative shrimp and crabs fishery developed in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which, in financial terms, even exceeded the landed value of the cod, but for license allocation reasons, hardly amended the social distress caused by the collapse of the great cod fishery.

Although history teaches that people don't learn from history, perhaps this time the European fisheries managers would learn from others' misconceptions, delusions, and defaults