Northern cod stocks show steep decline in once plentiful fishing areas

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. Northern cod stocks off Newfoundland suffered a steep decline over the last year, with Fisheries official finding the species has a lower survival rate and will likely continue to decease in the coming year.

The bleak findings were part of a report released Friday that said the stock dropped 30 per cent over the last year in the fishing area known as 2J 3KL that stretches from southern Labrador to below the Avalon peninsula.

Fisheries biologist Karen Dwyer said there was a large increase in the species’ natural mortality, or deaths due to factors other than fishing. That includes warming water temperatures and decreases in their food sources, such as shrimp and capelin.

“We have fish that are in poor condition and all those things taken together indicate that something in the ecosystem is happening to cause these mortality levels,” she said in an interview.

“They could be starving, they looked skinny, they’re just not healthy fish . ... (The ecosystem) is in flux at the moment.”

Dwyer said survival rates have shifted from 70 per cent in 2016 to 48 per cent in 2017.

The cod stock remains in what Fisheries calls a “critical zone.” The department said the stock had been showing improvement since 2012 with ups and downs along the way, but posted a sharp overall drop last year.

“It’s the biggest blip we’ve seen,” Dwyer said.

Still, she said the harvest rate continued to climb in the last several years, suggesting there needs to be a renewed call for low catch rates.

Catches in 2015 were 4,400 tonnes, 10,000 tonnes in 2016 and 13,000 tonnes last year in the stewardship and sentinel cod fisheries, along with bycatch.

“The precautionary approach requires that removals from all sources must be kept at the lowest possible level until the stock clears the critical zone,” she said in a briefing presented in St. John’s.

Sigrid Kuehnemund of the World Wildlife Fund’s ocean’s program said more data is needed to provide an accurate picture of the stock health.

“DFO has to be precautionary ... and the information DFO science has about the stock shows these declines, so you would expect to see an associated decline in fishing rates,” she said from St. John’s.

The latest estimates are a blow to fishermen who have watched with anticipation as scientists have tracked slow, gradual improvements in the stock health over the past decade.