Cod on the Move
JANET NYE, NEFSC/NOAA
A map from NOAA’s Northeast
Fisheries Science Center
shows the locations of cod
populations in the Northwest
Atlantic Ocean from
1968-1972.
Newfoundland’s Grand Banks remains
just 10 percent of what it was in the
1960s, according to the intergovernmental Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Council.
Great Britain is now grappling with
a cod collapse of its own, and the aggregate size of commercial hauls the
world over — from Peruvian anchovies
and bluefin tuna to Irish Sea sole — are
shrinking as populations of fish go bust.
A famous study published in the journal
Science in 2006 predicted that, absent
efforts to reverse the trend, all known
commercial seafood species faced collapse by mid-century.
Whether these most dire assessments
are overstated is a matter of debate, and
some newer studies have suggested that
a combination of government regulation
and diligent conservation is helping to
stabilize the falloff, at least in some ar-
eas. But there is little question that, collectively, humankind has been making
wanton and unsustainable
use about
of a preBy 2003-2008,
of 36 fish stocks in the
cious resource for ahalf
long
time.
Northwest
Atlantic Ocean,
including
appeared towere
Signs of trouble for
U.S.cod,
fisheries
have shifted northward,
plain as far back asaccording
the 1970s,
the
to one when
2009 study.
waters around the Gulf of Maine and
elsewhere had become an international
free-for-all, with industrial-strength
trawlers — including huge fleets from
the Soviet Union — plumbing the depths
just 12 miles off the American coasts
with relish. One estimate has suggested
that by the mid-1970s, annual harvests
were removing as much as 60 percent of
the adult cod from populations along the
U.S. and Canadian coasts — three times
the level considered sustainable for the
long term.
In an effort to establish some order,
the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act officially extended the territorial rights of
the United States — and the economic
benefits therein — out to 200 miles, and
it laid down some basic tenets for sustainable fishing. The legislation was updated in 1996 and 2006, and Congress is
now considering whether to reauthorize
the act again this year — all in an ongoing quest to establish the optimal suite