IS THERE HOPE FOR DEPLETED COD STOCKS?

 

The cod fishery on Newfoundland’s Grand Banks has been prosecuted for about 500 years.  In the late 1800s and early 1900s, annual landings were approximately 250,000 metric tons (551,155,655 pounds) per year, a figure that increased steadily through the late 1950s and 1960s until finally peaking at about 800,000 metric tons (1,763,698,097 pounds) in 1968.

The latter figure was completely unsustainable, and led the stock to collapse, with landings falling to 139,000 metric tons (306,442,544 pounds) just 10 years later.  A report issued by Canada in 1992, titled "The\Northern Cod Crisis,” noted that

“This has led one recent federal Commission to conclude that ‘an annual harvest of 300,000 tonnes was a sustainable figure in the years between 1902 and 1958, while harvests in excess of 600,000 could not be sustained during the later 1960s and early 1970s as was clearly evident from the notable and rapid decline in both catches and estimated stock size.”

By 1992, cod abundance had fallen to about 1% of its historic level, and the Canadian minister of fisheries and oceans shut down Newfoundland’s cod fishery for two years.  In 1993, the closure was extended indefinitely.  As a result, about 37,000 fishermen and fish processors lost their jobs.

The continuing moratorium did not cause cod abundance to increase as quickly as had been hoped.  A 2010 study found that Grand Banks cod had only rebuilt to 10% of their historical abundance—although even that represented a tenfold increase since 1992. The slow recovery was attributed to various causes; in some cases, the claims were contradictory.  Some blamed the slow pace of the recovery on insufficient quantities of the forage fish needed to support the cod population, while others argued that in the absence of substantial numbers of predators, forage fish increased in numbers and began feeding on juvenile cod.  Some argued that overfishing had removed the biggest fish from the population, and so changed the genetic makeup of the stock.  Some blamed a cooling ocean, while others pointed to rapid ocean warming as a contributing factor.  Bycatch in fisheries targeting other species was often cited as a serious problem.

But, while the cause of the slow recovery was never completely established, Canada was sure that it had the right answer to rebuild the stock—keeping a moratorium on targeted commercial landings in place.  And the stock seemed to respond, slowly growing larger until, in 2024, Canadian fisheries managers decided that the stock had grown large enough to justify reopening the commercial fishery with a quota of 18,000 metric tons (39,683,207 pounds), not quite 13% of what the quota had been in 1992, when the fishery was closed.

Last June, Canadian fisheries managers went one step further, and upgraded the northern cod’s stock status from “critical” to “healthy.”  Along with that upgrade came an increased commercial quota, which is now 59,000 metric tons (130,072,735 pounds).  Although that is still less than half of what the quota was in 1992, it is another positive sign that Canada’s approach to cod rebuilding works.  And by allowing fishermen to remove only five to seven percent of the population each year, rather than a supposedly sustainable 20%, Canadian fisheries managers have settled upon a precautionary management approach that could, with time, allow the stock to recover to, or at least near, pre-collapse levels.

That doesn’t mean that Newfoundland’s cod are out of the woods.  Questions still remain, including the question of whether large trawlers, which have been blamed for the original collapse, produce substantial bycatch, and can harm bottom habitat, should be allowed to continue in the offshore fishery (they are already not fishing inshore, where 70% of the quota is caught).  But one good omen is that the fishing industry itself seems to support a precautionary approach, with the owner of one fish processing plant reportedly saying,

“This is the most hope we’ve had in Newfoundland for the cod fishery in years…[But] nobody wants to repeat what happened in 1992.”

The next question is whether the Canadian approach might be adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, and whether it would work on the four cod stocks caught off of New England.

There is no question that it would be a hard sell, as New England fishermen typical fight back against any harvest reduction, no matter how badly needed, and instead constantly seek to increase quotas for various groundfish, including cod.  But there is also no question that the approach that NMFS has used to manage cod over the past 50-plus years has been a dismal failure.

New England cod stocks were never as large as those off Newfounland, but their abundance showed a somewhat similar pattern, with significant but, perhaps, sustainable landings in the 34.0-57.5 million pound range in the 1950s and 1960s, which spiked during the 1970s, eventually hit a peak of 117.8 million pounds in 1980, then began a steady decline, bottoming out at a little over 1 million pounds throughout the 2020s.

However, United States fisheries managers never embraced, or even seriously considered, the sort of moratorium that was embraced by their counterparts in Canada.   Instead, even when New England cod abundance reached historical lows, NMFS allowed fishing to continue, although at a vastly reduced landings level compared to 1950.  There is no evidence that NMFS ever seriously considered imposing a moratorium on the cod fishery, despite it’s current poor condition.

Of the four acknowledged Atlantic cod stocks—Western Gulf of Maine, Eastern Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and Southern New England—all four are overfished, and have been for some time, although only two of the four stock are currently experiencing overfishing.

Yet even in the case of the Georges Bank stock, which is in particularly poor shape, with “persistent” poor recruitment and the lowest spawning stock biomass ever recorded, only a minority of the New England Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee supported a more precautionary management approach.  Again, there is no suggestion that a moratorium should be imposed.  Instead, we see recommendations for

“Additional socioeconomic information on the fishery and communities associated with this newly defined stock area.”

Such request is similar to the comment made, with respect to Western Gulf of Maine cod, that the

“SSC is concerned about the socioeconomic impacts these [Acceptable Biological Catch estimates] will have on the fishery.”

While it isn’t unreasonable to be concerned about participants in a fishery and how they might be impacted by management measures, focusing on those socioeconomic impacts, in the face of an ongoing collapse of a stock, is wrong-headed, as nothing will cause greater socioeconomic harm than the complete or near-complete loss of a fishery.

Thus, the Newfoundland cod closure, even given the 37,000 lost jobs and economic disruptions that it caused, can be justified in the slow, but very real, increase in cod abundance that is allowing Canadian fisheries managers to begin increasing landings limits once again.

It is far harder to justify NMFS’ failure to take hard and meaningful action—which might very well include a moratorium—to rebuild the four New England cod stocks, and instead continuing its long-time policy of maintaining a fishery, albeit at very low levels, in a sort of death by one thousand cuts, in which fishermen are given small and steadily decreasing quotas, in the face of a small and decreasing cod population, but are not given the one thing they need most:  A reasonable hope that cod stocks might, in time, be managed back to health.

Thus, with the Newfoundland example standing bright and clear in front of them, perhaps it is time for federal fishery managers to stop torturing the domestic groundfish fleet with more timid and ineffective harvest reductions, and instead take a bold stance, shutting down the New England cod fishery in the hope of resurrecting it in a more meaningful form than anything we have seen in the last few decades.

There is no guarantee that such moratorium on all cod fishing would work.  It might jumpstart the recovery of overfished stocks, or it might just cause the quick and merciful demise of a fishery that has been languishing on life support for the past 25 or 30 years.

But, either way, it would likely lead to a better start than the ineffective management measures that are in place today.