Tag Archives: cod moratorium
Why Canada’s decision to lift a ban on cod fishing in Newfoundland after 32 years is so controversial – Podcast
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. 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. Links, more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 11:48
I was a kid when the moratorium started. As a union leader, I’m still fighting for change
Three decades have come and gone since the cod moratorium in Newfoundland and Labrador was announced on that fateful day in 1992. I was just 12 years old growing up in Calvert at the time, and the cod fishery was the heart and soul of the Southern Shore from Trepassey to Bay Bulls, just like the communities so many of you called home. My family remained in the fishery after the moratorium, but many others did not. More than 30,000 people lost their livelihoods that day and the landscape of our province was forever changed. By Keith Sullivan >click to read< 13:57
30 years after the moratorium, what have we really learned about cod and science?
“Although the industry has many problems, a shortage of fish is not one of them,” confidently pronounced the 1982 report of the Task Force on Atlantic Fisheries, which is commonly called the Kirby report. But a shortage of fish, as we now know, would become an insurmountable problem a decade later —so much so that on July 2, 1992, the federal government shuttered the commercial Northern cod fishery, once Canada’s largest fishery. So where have these vast learnings taken us 25 to 30 years on? Fisheries management remains highly dependent on modelling. >click to read< 17:28
The cod delusion – A moratorium on cod fishing that was supposed to last two years has now lasted 30.
Three decades on, the latest DFO science still puts Atlantic cod in the critical zone. “I hope politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa have learned something, because I’ve learned something: the moratorium was the biggest catastrophe ever heaped on the people in this province, ever. Nothing has been as bad as this,” says Captain Saunders, an 80-year-old Inuk. Seated in the wheelhouse of his longliner, docked in Pinsent’s Arm in late September 2021, Saunders speaks with the authority of someone with six decades of fishing experience, backed by centuries of hindsight. “Newfoundland and Labrador people fished for 500 years and didn’t damage the stocks. What Canada done was an atrocity in my opinion. It ruined a way of life. It ruined culture. All the stages, stage heads, they’re all falling apart, they’re all deteriorated — that’s the government did that.” >click to read< 17:40
LETTER: Seals to blame
I would like to add my voice to those that disclaim the recent information provided by DFO’s (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) Dr. G. Stenson (In “The cull question: Part I”, published in the Jan. 16 edition of The Central Voice). Seals have destroyed our fisheries in Atlantic Canada and particularly that in Newfoundland and Labrador. The poor condition of harp seals in terms of age, previously measured body mass and survivability of pups, is a direct result of the seal population reaching a threshold capacity level. They are finding it more difficult to find fish (all species) to eat. Thus the recent influx in fresh water river systems — this is not their natural habitat and they are there to consume any fresh water species that might be available (salmon, trout, eels, etc.). We have had a cod moratorium for 26 years,,, Bob Hardy >click to read<
