Intensive factory fishing
wiped out cod stocks on the Canadian Grand
Banks. Now seals are being killed in record
numbers in a hunt justified by the bogus claim
that seals are preventing cod stocks recover.
24/02/2005 — As warnings from nature go they
don't come much starker than the collapse
of the Canadian cod fishery in Newfoundland
due to overfishing. The cod, and thousands
of jobs that depended on them, disappeared
virtually overnight. Now because the cod stocks
have failed to recover, seals are being blamed
and hunted in record numbers.
Why did one of the world's most productive
fishing grounds collapse? Why were there seemingly
plenty of cod one year and none the next?
How come more seals are being killed? The
answer is a mix of history, greed and one
bad decision after another.
The Newfoundland Grand Banks, off the east
coast of Canada, used to be famous as amazingly
productive fishing grounds. The first European
explorers described the waters as being so
full of cod you just had to lower a basket
into the water to bring up it up full of cod.
In the centuries that followed, abundant fish
stocks drew many people to Newfoundland. Small
inshore boats took sustainable amounts of
cod for centuries up to the 1950s. The bounty
of the Grand Banks was enough for local and
small-scale fishing and a healthy population
of millions of harp seals.
Invasion of the fishing factories
Russian factory trawler fishing for cod in
the Barents Sea. Similar factory trawlers
systematically emptied the Canadian Grand
Banks of cod. Stocks have not recovered since
all cod fishing was banned on the Canadian
Grand Banks in 1992.
All this changed for the worse during the
1950 and 60's. Technological advances in trawler
design and power were modelled on the factory
whaling ships that had devastated the last
remaining whale populations. These huge factory
trawlers came from distant countries attracted
by the seemingly endless bounty of the fishery.
With huge nets they could hoover up massive
quantities of fish, quickly processing and
deep-freezing the catch, working around the
clock in all but the worst weather conditions.
In an hour they can haul up as much as 200
tons of fish, twice as much as a typical 16th
century ship would have caught in an entire
season.
The cod catch steadily increased to 800,000
tonnes in 1968 but this was the peak of the
clearly unsustainable catches. By 1975 the
annual catch had fallen by more than 60 percent.
Catches of other fish were also plummeting
under the relentless fishing pressure. This
forced Canada to extend its fishing limit
for foreign vessels from 12 miles to 200 miles
from its coast.
Thinking big
Rather than using this rule to reduce fishing
pressure on the cod the Canadian Government
and fishing industry saw a massive cash bonanza
- now exclusively for Canadians. Huge investments
and government subsides poured into the construction
of the same destructive factory trawlers so
big money could be made from the cod. In the
short term catches rose again and the industry
prospered. But beneath the waves the huge
trawl nets were not only scooping up cod and
anything in their path but the heavy gear
was ploughing up the seabed and destroying
the delicate ecosystem. The Grand Banks ecosystem
was already on borrowed time.
Factory trawlers systematically emptied the
Grand Banks of cod. Stocks have not recovered
since all cod fishing was banned on the Canadian
part of the Grand Banks in 1992. But trawlers
still fish for cod in international waters
of the Grand Banks.
As the cod declined the factory trawlers
used powerful sonar and satellite navigation
to target the few remaining large shoals of
cod, especially during the breeding season
when they gather in large numbers. Again short-term
expediency was winning out over the long-term
health of the fishery.
During the 1980s cod catches remained steady
but that was because larger, more powerful
and sophisticated vessels were chasing the
few remaining fish. Traditional inshore fishermen
had already noticed their catches declining
but the government preferred to listen to
the industrial fishing companies which claimed
there was no problem. Scientific warnings
in the late 80s went unheeded because any
cut in catches would cause politically unacceptable
job losses.
By 1992 the levels of Northern cod were the
lowest ever measured. The government was forced
to close the fishery, throwing 30,000 people
out of work and devastating many fishing communities.
Despite the ban, stocks have yet to recover
and it is uncertain if they will fully recover
given the changes wrought on the Grand Banks
ecosystem by decades of industrial fishing.
Enter the new villain - seals!
Having overseen and subsidised the destruction
of the Grand Banks fishery the Canadian Government
now pays out billions of dollars of taxpayers'
money in social security to out-of-work fishermen
and communities in Newfoundland. Rather than
recognise that it caused the collapse of the
ecosystem it has been busy looking for a new
scapegoat.
Because cod stocks have failed to recover
the popular government "common sense"
claim is this: it must be because harp seals
are eating all the cod and preventing their
recovery.
Seals make an expedient target to blame for
politicians. The Canadian government increased
the seal hunt quota during the 11000's and
in 2003 announced both the permanent closure
of the cod fishery and a huge increase in
the hunt to 350,000 seals.
The simplistic claim that seals eat too many
cod is the same flawed argument (whales are
eating too much fish) that whaling nations
now use to call for the resumption of commercial
whaling. Checking a few simple facts exposes
this sham. Cod make up only about 3 percent
of the average harp seal's diet. That diet
also includes species that eat young cod.
There is no science to back the claim that
seals are preventing the recovery of the cod.
In 1995, 97 scientists signed a petition on
the subject: "All scientific efforts
to find an effect of seal predation on Canadian
groundfish stocks have failed to show any
impact. Overfishing remains the only scientifically
demonstrated conservation problem related
to fish stock collapse."
The human greed that caused the collapse
of the cod fishery should not be an excuse
to start pushing another species in the same
ecosystem to dangerously low levels, especially
when no one knows for sure what effects this
will have.
You don't manage an ecosystem by beating it
to death.
