An Atlantic Fishery in Trouble, or Thriving, or Something

Gadus morhua, is a very strange name for what some people see as an even uglier fish. A fish that can reach lengths of over four feet weighing of 55-77 pounds or more, living as long as 20 years, although most fish landed are in the 2-4 year-old class. Millions of this species come to U.S. ports and markets through the efforts of American commercial fishing. We see fillets from this common fish in restaurants’ “fish and chips” platters, in frozen food supermarket coolers, and in the cases of local fish mongers. Its tasty white flesh is accepted and enjoyed even by landlubbers who ordinarily might not seek out fish as their protein source. What is it? It’s the once ubiquitous Atlantic cod.

The head of NOAA’s fisheries section called the Atlantic cod “one of the iconic fisheries.” This is the same fish that fed early European settlers all along America’s northern to mid-Atlantic coast, from near-shore fisheries to the edge of the continental shelf; a species whose overfished stocks collapsed, some in the 1990s, or are in danger of imminent collapse. A stock is considered “collapsed” when it declines by more than 95 percent of its maximum historical biomass. An amazing reversal of fortune.

These commercially valuable fish are tracked, monitored, and managed in the Northwest Atlantic (northeastern U.S. coast) as two defined stocks: (1) the Gulf of Maine and (2) the Georges Bank and Southward. Commercial and recreational cod fishermen are active year round; commercial operators using trawls and gillnets, recreational anglers dropping lines from charter and large overnight party boats. In 2010 the commercial catch was valued at more than $15 million, obviously an important component of the Northeast’s economy.

The New York Times, in a February 11, 2012 article, reported that recent data revealed that the cod faces such enormous fishing pressure that if all human pursuit of the species ended right now, it would not rebound to federally required levels even by 2014. Federal regulators therefore proposed an 82 percent reduction from the previous year’s catch, a limit that would effectively shut down much of the cod fishery and, at least temporarily, retire many of the boats, crews, and skippers. Another drawback to such a large catch reduction in cod is that G. morhua is only one of a group of 20 groundfish species, including flounder and haddock, that are monitored and regulated as one unit because these bottom-dwellers often travel, swim, and feed together, resulting in them turning up in the same nets at the same time. The fate of one of these species often affects the others.

No one doubts that fishing is hard, sometimes dangerous, work performed in every sort of weather and sea conditions. It is also an old industry that has fewer and fewer new entrants. The sons and daughters of owners and captains, searching for careers far away from the cruel seas, increasingly shy away from following in their family’s or father’s footsteps. This aversion to fishing also runs counter to the increasing demand for seafood to feed an ever-growing human population: fewer boats and skippers, fewer fish.

The current cod situation exemplifies how immediate needs often supersede what really has to be done to better protect future needs. It is rare that a fisherman, commercial or sport (and I am a sport fisherman) ever utters that he is catching too many fish. If fact, there is an economic principle called the Tragedy of the Commons, which applies more to the fishing industry than probably any other, which maintains that a fisherman, knowing he is damaging his livelihood in the long run, would prefer to take his share or more of the common bounty just to prevent his competitor from doing the same. It’s a short term self-defense tactic. It is also not unusual for fishermen’s associations to question the science involved in setting fishing limits and seasons, even challenging the idea that certain fish stocks are in trouble at all. They often reject any finding that reflects poorly on their industry practices until the conclusion is proven true to an absolute degree and it’s too late to do anything to effectively correct it.

So, to placate the industry and stall the inevitable, NOAA regulators, adopting a one-year emergency rule, saw fit to reduce the 2012 catch by only 22 percent from the previous year. Fishermen are happier, regulators have the fishermen’s lobby temporarily off their backs, consumers will continue to see cod and their groundfish neighbors in their markets, and the cod stocks will continue to get smaller and smaller, perhaps until they become so scarce that they are no longer worth pursuing, by trawl or rod-and-reel.

My book The Double-Crested Cormorant: Symbol of Ecological Conflict is now available in a  hardcover version at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and the University of Michigan Press, www.press.umich.edu which also offers an E-book edition. Also, check your local booksellers for availability.

For insights into the book, log on to my Author Page at Amazon at www.amazon.com/author/dennis-wild.