Cod Collapse

The Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery was once the most successful commercial fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992, many pointed to failures in management, such as uncontrolled harvesting, as likely culprits. Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management itself was the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were state-managed and still, two decades later, there is no recovery in sight. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered and has been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.

It's 1992 in Newfoundland and Labrador and the cod moratorium has put some thirty thousand fishers out of work. Journalist Jenn Thornhill Verma blends memoir and research in this gripping account of the enduring legacy of the largest mass layoff in Canadian history. Tracing the early history of the fishery to the present, Verma considers what lies ahead and what was lost along the way.

The northern cod have been almost wiped out. Once the most plentiful fish on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, the cod is now on the brink of extinction, and tens of thousands of people in Atlantic Canada have been left without work by a 1992 moratorium on fishing the stock. Today, the Pacific salmon stocks are in similar trouble – victims of the same blind, stupid greed. Angry, accusatory fingers have been pointed at various possible culprits for the collapse of the cod – at the Spanish and Portuguese, who for hundreds of years sent ever-bigger fleets to the Grand Banks; at the factory-freezer trawlers, which “vacuumed” the ocean floor for the prized fish; at those inshore fishermen who circumvented the rules governing the fishery; at the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is responsible for managing the fishery; at the harp seal, the cod’s competitor for food, whose numbers have exploded in recent years; even at Nature, for lowering the temperature of the ocean. In Lament for an Ocean, the award-winning true-crime writer Michael Harris investigates the real causes of the most wanton destruction of a natural resource in North American history since the buffalo were wiped off the face of the prairies. The story he carefully unfolds is the sorry tale of how, despite the repeated and urgent warnings of ocean scientists, the northern cod was ruthlessly exploited.

As the last of the northern cod disappeared from the fishing banks of eastern North America during the waning years of the 20th century, more than just fish faced the threat of extinction. In communities all around the island of Newfoundland, thousands of fishermen and their families suddenly found themselves confronted by a similar threat. Servants of the Fish is the story of these people, who are at once the perpetrators and the victims of this event. As he did in his bestselling Riddle of the Ice, Arms employs the drama of the voyage to bring readers face to face with the people and the geography of the tale he tells. It is the tale of a particular time and place. Yet it is also an allegory of sorts--about predators and prey, about greed and denial, and about our collective ability as human beings to destroy natural systems once thought to be infinite.

Written by professional historians, this book traces the growth of human settlement in Newfoundland and Labrador from Aboriginal pioneers to the current era. It also addresses common misconceptions about elements of Newfoundland and Labradors history.

In the early 1990s the collapse of the Atlantic groundfish stocks signaled the destruction of life in the seas, but it also threw 40,000 people out of work, unraveling the very fabric of rural life throughout Atlantic Canada. Twenty years later, even after fishing moratoriums and limited directed fishing, the cod have not recovered and some stocks are on the verge of biological extinction. The fishing industry, politicians and government scientists blame the growing population of grey seals – a species that had up until the 1970s been severely depleted – and argue that a large-scale cull of the population is needed to save the cod. In The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Linda Pannozzo finds that the truth is much more complex and that the seals are scapegoats for the federal government’s mismanagement of the cod stocks, deflecting attention away from the effects of global warming and the continued use of destructive fishing methods. The collapse of the cod, its failure to recover and the recent recommendations for large-scale grey seal culls are stark reminders of how fisheries, science and public policy are increasingly estranged from each other.

The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds. Each chapter discusses the types of SES questions to which the particular methods are suited and the potential resources and skills required for their implementation, and provides practical examples of the application of the methods. In addition, the book contains a conceptual and practical introduction to SES research, a discussion of key gaps and frontiers in SES research methods, and a glossary of key terms in SES research. Contributions from 97 different authors, situated at SES research hubs in 16 countries around the world, including South Africa, Sweden, Germany and Australia, bring a wealth of expertise and experience to this book. The first book to provide a guide and introduction specifically focused on methods for studying SES, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainability science, environmental management, global environmental change studies and environmental governance. The book will also be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and professionals working at the science–policy interface in the environmental arena.

SUSTAINABLE FISHERY SYSTEMS An up-to-date and interdisciplinary guide to sustainable fisheries Fisheries, whether small-scale or large-scale, are filled with complexity and uncertainty. Making the right decisions to successfully manage fisheries for sustainability and resilience requires a systems approach — including both natural and human elements, and their many interactions. To understand fisheries, and how they change over time, a diverse range of fishery knowledge must be brought together. Sustainable Fishery Systems, 2nd edition meets these needs. The new edition provides essential information that can be readily applied within government, community, industrial, academic and research settings. Sustainable Fishery Systems, 2nd edition retains the first edition’s emphasis on themes such as sustainability, resilience, uncertainty, complexity, and conflict, and expands its treatment of topics that have, since the first edition’s publication, become crucial to consider in the field of fisheries. As a result, readers will find: Updated and expanded coverage of topics including coastal conservation, ecosystem-based management, co-management, community-based management, and more New chapters covering connections between fisheries and marine protected areas, biodiversity conservation, climate and fisheries, and multi-sectoral management A more detailed introduction to the “systems” perspective of fisheries, reflecting the substantial growth in that subject’s importance, and covering in detail the natural, human and governance aspects of fisheries. Sustainable Fishery Systems, 2nd edition is an indispensable interdisciplinary resource for educators, researchers, government agencies, and fisheries managers.