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Cod fishery may be finished: Scientist
Numbers down since moratorium lifted but some fishermen are not convinced
Toronto Star
6th March 2003
DENE MOORE
CANADIAN PRESS
ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland
The time may have come to admit there cannot be a cod fishery in Newfoundland any more, a scientist told frustrated fishermen yesterday.
George Rose told about 70 fishermen that things are not looking good for the northern cod fishery off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
"We've tried the best we can to keep a fishery in place on the northeast coast because, fundamentally, we believe in that," said Rose, a member of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council.
"It's kind of a last resort that we say we can't fish any more in Newfoundland. It's a last resort but, maybe, we've come to that."
Rose, whose council must make recommendations to the federal fisheries minister by March 31, asked the fishermen for any ideas to save the fishery.
In 1992, Ottawa imposed a moratorium designed to restore depleted groundfish stocks and, in 1998, the moratorium was lifted to allow a drastically scaled-back cod fishery.
But surveys done during the past four years suggest the northern cod population has since declined. The cod quota is currently 5,600 tonnes, just 2 per cent of what it averaged in the 1980s.
George Lilly, a fisheries department scientist, said studies continue to show it will be a decade or more before the northern cod recover — if ever.
"We've had 10 years of a moratorium and we're seeing very little response in the offshore so far," Lilly said. "So, it looks like it's going to be a long time."
Ottawa has been bracing for a shutdown of the fishery.
Last month, Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault asked federal and provincial departments to see what programs could be called upon to assist fishermen and plant workers who would lose their jobs.
But the science behind a possible closing remained unconvincing to some of the fishermen at the meeting.
"We never seen fish so thick as we've seen the last couple years," said Keith Smith, spreading his arms wide before him to demonstrate the size of cod he's pulled into his boat.
Other fishermen at the meeting agree the species is in decline but say a shutdown, without other measures to save the cod stocks, won't make any difference.
Fishermen blame seals, foreign over-fishing and the ways other species are fished.
Tony Doyle, a fourth generation fisherman from Bay de Verde, Nfld., told the St. John's meeting there is no point in closing the cod fishery with no plan in place.
"What I am asking is that you not recommend to the minister to take away 7,000 pounds of cod from me so that the harps and the hoods (seals) can eat it," Doyle told the panel.
Damaging fishing techniques, like dragging and gill netting being used to catch other stocks, are further depleting cod.
"We haven't learned a thing," Doyle said.
The federal fisheries department is expected to make a final decision on closing the cod fishery by early April.
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