In this episode, we delve into the ongoing challenges facing the cod fishery in Canada, drawing parallels between the current situation and the historical 1992 moratorium on cod fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador. The discussion highlights how political pressures have repeatedly overridden scientific advice regarding fishing quotas, leading to detrimental outcomes for the cod population. We examine the recent push by fisheries unions and indigenous groups to increase the fishing quota from 15,000 tons to 25,000 tons, and the subsequent decision to raise it only to 18,000 tons despite concerns from DFO scientists.
Join us as we explore the implications of these decisions and the frustrations of fishery scientists when political interests clash with environmental sustainability.
Link to article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cod-reopened-fisheries-ministers-1.7317359
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The history of the cod fishery in Canada serves as a poignant example of how political decisions can overshadow scientific advice, leading to dire consequences for marine ecosystems and local communities. This pattern has been evident since the early days of commercial fishing in Canada, particularly with the Atlantic cod, which has been a staple of the fishing industry for centuries.
Early Days of Cod Fishing
Cod fishing in Canada dates back to before the 1800s, with Indigenous peoples relying on the abundant fish for sustenance. The fishery became increasingly industrialized in the 1950s, resulting in significant fishing pressures. As technology advanced, more fish were caught, and the population began to decline. Despite warnings from scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) about the dwindling cod stocks, political leaders often prioritized the economic interests of fishermen and the fishing industry over scientific recommendations.
The 1992 Moratorium
By the late 1980s, the situation had become critical. DFO scientists consistently reported a steep decline in cod populations, advising that quotas should be reduced to allow the stocks to recover. However, politicians, influenced by the demands of fishermen and the economic implications of a reduced fishery, continued to set high quotas or even increase them. This disregard for scientific advice culminated in the 1992 moratorium on cod fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador, a drastic measure that halted the fishery entirely.
The moratorium had profound effects on the local economy and communities that depended on fishing. Many fishers were forced to abandon their traditional livelihoods, leading to significant social and economic upheaval in Newfoundland. The once-thriving fishing industry was decimated, and many individuals had to seek employment in other sectors, such as the oil and gas industry, often met with resentment and dissatisfaction.
A Pattern of Ignoring Science
Fast forward to 2016, and there were signs of recovery in the cod population. However, growth was stagnant, and scientists warned that the population remained in a cautionary zone, close to dipping back into a critical state. Despite this, political pressures resurfaced, with fisheries unions and Indigenous groups advocating for an increase in the fishing quota from 15,000 tons to 25,000 tons. The government, influenced by these stakeholders, decided to increase the quota to 18,000 tons, disregarding the cautionary advice from DFO scientists.
This recent decision reflects a troubling trend where political motivations continue to override scientific recommendations. The DFO had advised maintaining a conservative approach to ensure the long-term sustainability of the cod population, yet the government chose to prioritize immediate economic benefits over ecological stability.
Conclusion
The history of the cod fishery in Canada serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of allowing political decisions to overshadow scientific advice. The repeated pattern of ignoring scientific warnings has led to significant declines in fish populations and the devastating moratorium of 1992. As the government moves forward with increased quotas and the reopening of the commercial fishery, it is crucial to learn from past mistakes and prioritize sustainable practices that protect both the fishery and the communities that depend on it. The future of the cod fishery hinges on a balanced approach that respects scientific guidance while considering the needs of local stakeholders.
Canadian federal politicians are getting in the way of the cod fishery. Now it's not as if we haven't seen this before 1992, the Canadian government had to declare a moratorium on cod fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador because of increased fishing pressures and not lowering the quota. As the DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Ocean scientists said, "Hey, you know what? We're starting to see a decline in the cod fishery population. We should do something about a politician who said, 'You know what? It's okay. Fishermen want to fish more, so we're going to continue to fish these cods as if nothing's ever happening. What happens? Boom, 1992 moratorium. And we haven't been able to fish the cod fishery since. Now fast forward to 2016, the cod fishery started to come back just a little bit, not much, just a little bit. And then we started to notice that the population was stagnant in terms of growth. So what do we do? We start to make sure that the quota stays the same. We don't allow, we've allowed a very small quota number of fish 15,000 tons per year allowed to be fished in Newfoundland and Labrador. But recently, and as in this past spring, the fisheries unions and the fisheries unions and dishes populations wanted to increase that quota so that they could fish more. And they want to increase it to 25,000 tons. It didn't go to 25,000 tons, but it did increase causing DFO scientists to say, 'Hey, you know what? I don't think this is a good idea. Paul just said, 'You know what? It's okay. No worries. We'll be fine. We'll just increase it to 18,000 tons.' That's what we have to deal with as scientists, and we wonder why fishery scientists get so frustrated sometimes when politicians get in the way. Well, we're going to talk about why this is happening, why this continues to happen, and why it needs to stop on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. In today's episode, it's a frustrating one. I'm going to be honest here, because this is something that we've seen before. I've explained this many times, but for those of you who are new, I'm going to explain it again. The cod fishery. In the 60-78, actually, it was how fishery, commercial fisheries were defined in Canada with cod all the way back to the, before the 1800s. As soon as people landed and people before that indigenous people were fishing cod, because it was plentiful. You could throw a bucket in the water, and all of a sudden, you get codfish filled in that bucket. Fast forward to the 50s, where you started to see an industrialization of fisheries gear, and you started to see more and more fish get fished, and then you started to see the population just go, "Boo!" Slowly decline, until finally, the government of Canada had to declare a moratorium on the cod fishery. Well, why did this happen? Why didn't somebody, why didn't somebody speak up? We have these stock assessment scientists that are doing work. They collect data every year, and they're allowed, they analyze it, and they say, "Hey, you know what? The population is doing really well. You can continue to fish at this quota." Or, the population is not doing so well, we should continue, we should consider lowering the quota. This is our advice. Well, you know what? It actually happened. The DFO scientists for a decade were saying that the cod fishery was slowly declining, and it was starting to get faster and steeper and steeper to climb. But the politicians didn't listen. They just continued to set the quotas the same, or even increased some of the quotas at times. And then eventually, what happens is there were no fish to fish, and it took longer to catch as many fish, and at one point, you couldn't even catch any cod fish. And so they declared a moratorium on the cod fishery the government did, and we haven't been fishing cod that much ever since. Now, it doesn't mean we haven't been fishing cod, it doesn't mean you can't find Atlantic Cod somewhere in Canada, because we still continue to fish in smaller doses and smaller quotas. And recently, there was a meeting with the Federal Fisheries Commission said, "Hey, you know what? We're going to have a meeting, we'll get all the stakeholders together, we'll get nonprofit organizations, indigenous people over, we'll get commercial fishing over, and we'll get the government to come in and discuss. Let's discuss, let's look at the data, let's discuss what we need to do." And the government, the scientist said, "Hey, you know what? This is where we're at here, since 2016, the population has not grown." Now, it's in a cautionary zone, meaning that it's not in a critical zone, it's still doing okay, but the population hasn't grown above the cautionary zone, and it's very close to dipping to the critical zone if we aren't careful. So if we're not careful, it's going to dip into the critical zone. Remember that. So what do we do? DFO scientists say, "You know what? We're a little concerned, so maybe we shouldn't increase the quota. We should keep the quota at 13,000 tons." The same level announced in 2022 and 2023. They also recommended that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Science maintain a stewardship fishery for cod, meaning a limited fishery practiced solely by inshore harvesters, which basically mean indigenous and small commercial fishing. So basically, artisanal fishing. So according to some of the news says, certainly this option is based on the scientific advice, reads a briefing note. However, the Minister, the Minister Diane Libutier, ignored that advice of the staff within her own department and said, "Re-open the commercial cod fishery off Newfoundland Labrador in June." So she allowed, not only does she allow the fishering to start, but they allowed it to open it up to people not beyond the offshore commercial fishing, which can get dangerous because it's harder to monitor. It's harder to enforce that quota, right? And so the quota has actually increased to, I believe, it was. So according to the briefing note, DFO presented two other options to the Minister, other than keeping it the same. Reopening a commercial fishery with a total allowable catch of 15,000 tons with quotas distributed solely among inshore and indigenous fish harvesters or reopening a commercial fishery with a total allowable catch of 18,000 tons, allowing the return of offshore vessels more than 100 feet long. Now we're talking about some big vessels here. So DFO warned staff warned, however, that both options presented a higher risk of northern cod stock returning to what the department considers the critical zone. And while DFO announced last year that after rejigging its stock assessment framework, that northern cod has been in the cautious zone since 2016, population growth have stalled, may have stalled, worrying government scientists. So what was happening is they actually, since 2016, they're saying that the population was in the critical zone, but they rejigged and they added in more information and they said, "You know what? It's actually in the cautious zone, which is one level higher." Still, as the name says, cautionary, it's not in the zone where you're like, "Hey, we can go and we can go ham on these fish and we can have a lot of fish here." So the briefing note indicates that the federal liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador Caucus composed of the prov-- ah, sorry, composed of the provinces 6 liberals MPs will only support option 3, the 18,000 tons. So not just keeping it the same, not just reopening at 15,000, but at the 18,000 level. So you should consider 20,000, which would be politically-- which would be a political victory for Newfoundland. The document continues to note that the NL Caucus, Newfoundland Caucus, is united on going ahead with a commercial fishery. So they're going ahead. Now, what are they doing this for? What are they doing this for? They're not doing it for the cod. They're not doing it for the cod, because DFO scientists said, "Hey, you know what? We're still in the cautious zone. We still have to be careful just because we're out of the critical zone and we have been since 2016." Doesn't mean that a larger fishery can happen. And so you're not doing it based on science, which is what the government should be doing it. Now, yes, you have to consider other stakeholders at play here, but increasing it a little bit, and meaning in the middle, but not going all out and doing it to 18,000 ton level. So in the end, though, on June 26th, the minister announced that reopening of the commercial fishery and the total allowable catch of 18,000, the course of action is supported by her liberal colleagues. Said, "I did not, and I do not believe that DFO science would recommend the policy put forth by the minister. There is a long history with this and other Canadian fisheries of politics trumping science." And this is George Rose, a longtime fisheries based scientist in British Columbia, who's been 40 years studying cod. Our fisheries continue to suffer, and this is what happens, right? Is you get politics that are injected into the system, and I get it, right? This is a human-centric type of decision-making process. You have stakeholders that come in. You have the commercial fisheries. You have inshore fisheries. You have indigenous fishers. You have non-profit organizations that are representing the environment and representing protection of the actual fish and the fishery, and you get the government. And the politicians have to please the people, because if they want to get voted in, they want to get support for the next election, then they have to appease that at some point. Now, I'm sure they're going to say it's for different left, different other reasons. They want to, they say, "Hey, you know what? We're actually out of the critical zone, and we actually have more fish available to us, so we should increase it." But science is very conservative, because the reason why science is very conservative is because it just tells it how it is. And as a scientist, I agree with what the department scientists are saying, the fisheries and ocean scientists are saying. We should be careful. There's really no reason to rush the increase in fisheries. What happens if you rush it and it happens too soon, and you go back to the critical zone, it'll be really difficult to get back to normal. Just note that after the moratorium in 1992, we are still not to the levels that need, that we need in the future, like that we had back in the 70s and 80s or even before that. That's how bad it is. That's where we're at right now. We are at a point where if we screw this up the second time, even though we know better, we are at a point right now where it's like, "This is our fault. This is our fault the first time, but this is even more on us because we can't make the proper decision. We rush things too much." And let's be honest, this fishery is sensitive. It's going to be sensitive. Now, not only are you bringing in an increase in the quota, but you're also bringing in offshore fishers, fishing vessels over 100 feet. That's a lot. That's something that we have to really start to look at and say, "Is this really what we're coming to? Are we really at this point where we can start to include offshore fishers?" I just don't think it is. I think we're screwing up here. I'm a conservative person, especially when it comes to listening to scientists. You have to listen to science. I'm not one to take a lot of leaps of faith when it comes to this, when it comes to anything really, but it's something that I'm very cautious of. Sometimes it feels like the liberals are really for the environment. When they first came in to power in 2015, they started to bring back better marine protected areas, better protections. They brought fish habitat back into the Fisheries Act. They reject the Fisheries Act to be tougher, and they had all the dealings of what they wanted to come out as being more environmentally friendly. They had a climate change plan, even though it was not as aggressive as we wanted it to be, but they had something. The opposition, the conservatives didn't have anything like that. In fact, they were opposite of what was an environmental plan. They doubled down on fossil fuels. Any plan at this point was good, but now it seems like even though they came out with the protections, they came out with the fish habitat and better fish habitat and better fisheries act, more marine protected areas than we've ever had. Then all of a sudden, when it comes down to calling fisheries quotas and making sure that we're protecting the fishery and protecting the people as well. You have to remember that when, and for those of you who don't know, that when the moratorium came into place, when it were for cod, it changed Newfoundland. It changed Newfoundland like it's never been changed before, because the big industry was fishing. Everybody had someone and you someone who was a fisher. They would go out and they would catch cod. They would catch lobster. They would go out and catch fish. They would come back. But then it changed. It all changed in one day. It happened over time, but that one moratorium killed the fishery. What happened, a lot of those fishers couldn't fish anymore, and they had to go into another industry, the fossil fuel industry, the oil and gas industry, which they hated. It's a leave Newfoundland and a lot of them had to leave Newfoundland and go to Alberta to work. They would go back and forth between Newfoundland and Alberta. They hated it. Many of the people hated it. They were taking from what they were supposed to be doing as a generational job and practice, and they had to be taken out, and it wasn't necessarily their fault. Yes, they pushed and pushed and pushed, like the unions pushed, the fisheries, commercial fisheries pushed, and the companies pushed, and the processors pushed. But the science wasn't saying the same thing. It was saying, "No, we cannot do this. This is not what we would need to do." And then what happened? Boom, moratorium. Can't fish anymore. And now the fishery's starting to come back. You started to see people go back to fishing, and slowly coming back, creeping and creeping, because the population didn't rebound like we thought they did. Some people blame seals, right? Other people blame climate change, like as it is, and it's probably a little bit of both. And then we were still fishing 13,000 tons per year in Newfoundland and Labrador. I don't know how long that was going on for, but at least since 2016. And now it's 18,000 tons, and people wanted to even push it even more, and it's opening up to offshore fishing. It's not just in shorts, offshore fishing as well, which is harder to enforce. When you start to get to offshore fishing in bigger boats, it's harder to enforce. You can't get the boats all out there. It's really difficult. So now we're depending on an industry that's already failed us in the past, and the government just seems to forget that, and it decides that, "Hey, you know what? We're going to help you with that, and we're going to help you fail faster by giving you what you want." And I don't know if the fishing groups feel like this, and the indigenous groups feel like this is a compromise, and it's not what they want. They want 20,000 tons. But I feel like this is a failure on the scientists and on the conservationists, like the environmental groups, to get this done. It's a failure on the government to not put this into place, to not heed the warnings of the scientists, like they should have heated it back in the '90s, in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. But it seems like we're doomed to repeat ourselves here in Canada. And this is the problem when it comes to fishery. We could have a sustainable fishery here, but we keep pushing and pushing and pushing until we're like, "Oh, nope, we screwed up. Now we've got to back up a little bit." And that would be fine if we could say, "Hey, you know what? We're going to increase it by 5,000 tons. We're going to open it up a little later, and then we're going to monitor it, and then we're going to use adaptive management to like, "Hey, let's see what happened next year, and if we have to, we'll curtail it back just in case." But it's so hard to go back. It's easy to push forward. It's so hard to go back and reduce the amount. And now we're in that problem right now. We're in that situation. And it's frustrating. You can hear the frustration on it, and it's just, I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm very disappointed in this decision. I don't want to see this. You know, DFO scientists are great scientists. They've been doing this for decades, and we continue to ignore them, and we let politics win. Sometimes we just don't know what's good for us, and we just continue to go and make these bad decisions. And this is, I feel, is a bad decision. I hope it's not. I hope it's not. I want fishers to get their money. I want fishers to be able to do their thing. But I feel like this is not just about fishers. It's about companies getting involved, getting greedy, and that we know what happens when it comes down to that. And it disappoints me, really, really disappoints me. But I'd love to hear what you think. Do you think this is a good decision on the government? Do you think this is what we need? Do we need to push it a little bit? See what happens to the population, even though we're in the cautionary zone. We're not out of that cautionary zone yet. It's easy to go back to the critical zone. Or do you think we need like we just need to push it? Or do you think we need it's a bad decision, and we need to come back on it? I would love to hear your opinions. If you go to Spotify and you watch this or listen to this, however you want to do it, you can go and you can answer a poll. Do you think this is a good decision by the government to open up this fisheries, to more of higher quota, and to more fishers, and open it up offshore? Or do you think this is a bad decision? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also, you can put your comments on the YouTube video that's going to be up on this. And of course, you can contact me on Instagram @howto protect the ocean. That's @howto protect the ocean. Just DM me. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And I want to thank you for joining me and continuing to support this podcast. If you know someone who's into fisheries, or if you know someone who wants to know more about the ocean, and you think this podcast would serve them well, please feel free to share it. I give you permission. It's free to share. It's free to say, "Hey, you know what I was thinking about you, my friend or my family member?" And I think that you might benefit from knowing more about the ocean, because you've been asking about it. So just hit them up. If they want to be a marine biologist, send them this. If they are a marine biologist, send this. I'd love to hear what they think. But that's it for today's episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation. [music]
