The infamous anniversary date of July 2 has now come and gone.
As all Navigator readers are more than aware, that date this year marked the 30th anniversary of then federal Fisheries Minister John Crosbie announcing the closure of the 500-year-old Northern cod fishery.
The anniversary of any historical event is always a time for reflection and looking back on what exactly happened — oftentimes made up of a combination of both facts, fallacies and fantasy.
The funny thing about historical time is that it has a way of clouding or hazing over the particulars of a certain event, allowing people to develop their own lasting conclusions. This is kind of how legends are formed. And Crosbie’s famous words and the subsequent reaction can certainly be classified as legendary in the annals of Newfoundland and Labrador’s fishing industry history.
Three decades is a considerable amount of water under the proverbial bridge and many of today’s successful professional fish harvesters were still in diapers when the moratorium was announced. And while they have all heard the stories of how the entire east coast fishery was turned upside down on a fateful Thursday afternoon in downtown St. John’s, many of them might argue that the abrupt cod shutdown was the cataclysmic event that spawned the modern and profitable fishery of today.
While harvesters will not debate that shutting down the Northern cod fishery was a major economic and sociological blow to fishing families all over rural Newfoundland and Labrador, without it, we might not have the fisheries diversification we have today with snow crab, Northern shrimp and other once under-utilized species. One cannot argue that the personal income of today’s fish harvesters far exceeds that of their predecessors 30 years ago.
So how should one go about recognizing such an event as the cod moratorium? Is this particular groundfish fishery still relevant to today’s modern enterprises? The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) recently announced that the 2022 Stewardship cod fishery will have the same quota as last year — 12,999 tonnes. This of course is a far cry from the wild west, heyday cod fishery days of five decades plus ago, when in 1968, an all-time record of 810,000 tonnes of cod was landed off our shores.
So, should the cod moratorium continue to be recognized and immortalized each year by the public? The newly-formed Seaward Enterprises Association of Newfoundland and Labrador (SEA-NL) still thinks it should.
Ryan Cleary, SEA-NL’s executive director was one of the organizers of a June 30th event called Moratorium Story, Northern Cod 30 Years On.
“The impact of the moratorium has had a deep and profound impact on the province’s psyche, culture and economy. It must be recognized for the good of past and future generations,” Cleary explained.
“This lack of recognition of our legendary fish highlights just how under-appreciated it is by our decision-makers, which must change,” he added.
Merv Wiseman, another event organizer, said the 30th anniversary of the Northern cod moratorium is both a monumental and shameful event.
“What is underscored after three decades is how little priority has been given to advance the recovery of a fish so important to the province’s very makeup, and to the country’s food security.”
While some in this region choose to recognize the past implications of this event and its lasting impact on the cod fishery, ironically, other North Atlantic fishermen are looking to the future of their groundfish stocks.
Our brethren fisherman south of the border are currently in the midst of dealing with the fate of cod stocks off their shores.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently started a conversation with Gulf of Maine and George’s Bank fishermen over the status of their Atlantic cod.
Findings by a working group of researchers indicated that the lifecycle of the species is being influenced by the environment, specifically rising ocean temperatures, which have changed the fish’s spawning behavior and their predator-prey relationships.
These fishermen did not dispute these findings overall, but did question whether these facts are having the same implications that the researchers believe.
They are the ones with a lifetime of experience on the water and say they have seen these cycles before and that cod stocks fluctuate, but have always bounced back.
The fishermen told the researchers that they are more concerned about the impact thousands of hungry gray seals are having on the cod stocks than warming waters.
One harvester said, “I watched the numbers go from 15,000 to 50,000,” he said. But that hasn’t meant there are fewer fish. They just swim lower than the seals can go, he explained.
This whole narrative sound familiar?
This juxtaposition of the current cod stock conversations is ironically eye-opening.
Here in Atlantic Canada, many are of the opinion that such events as the moratorium should never be forgotten — and they are correct in that lessons should be learned from the mistakes of the past but what good comes from dwelling on the negative?
At least the fishermen along the Eastern Seaboard are using past experiences to influence future fisheries. Maybe a little less dwelling and little more positive pontificating needs to be done here as well.
Maybe it would be wise to heed the advice of Playwright George Bernard Shaw when he said,” We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”
