Was the fishery mismanaged under Canada?
Joining Canada in 1949 meant fishery at heart of newest province would come under jurisdiction of federal government
Richard Cashin was just 13, but he well remembers Confederation and the heated debates leading up to the historic union with Canada in 1949.
But for a country whose raison d’être was the fishery, and whose culture and economy was defined by it, management of the resource wasn’t really the hottest topic as Newfoundland and Labrador hurtled toward becoming Canada’s youngest province.
“I don’t think the fishery was much of an issue,” Cashin, now 88, said in a recent interview.
“It was never an issue. Nobody talked about the fishery.”
Cashin’s uncle, politician Peter Cashin, advocated for responsible government and clashed with future premier Joey Smallwood over Confederation, warning Newfoundlanders against giving up on self-government.
Richard Cashin grew up to become a significant figure in the province’s political history in his own right. A lawyer, he served as the Liberal MP for St. John’s West from 1962-1968 before becoming a co-founder and the first president of the trade union that is now the Fish, Food and Allied Workers (FFAW).
‘I’D LIKE TO SEE IT PROSPER’
While Confederation promised some relief from poverty for families and to ease the struggling nation’s debt, it also meant the fishery would come under federal management.
Cashin thought this was a good thing, because there was little being managed prior to Confederation.
“We had a jurisdiction of 12 miles and we had no navy,” he said. “We didn’t enforce a damn thing as far as I know. When we joined Canada, they had the resources and so on to manage the fishery. … In any event, Confederation was a positive for the fishery.”
Cashin acknowledged the fishery has not been smooth sailing and has certainly had ups and downs over the past 75 years. As for its future, he has a simple wish: “I’d like to see it prosper, that’s all.”
EARLY MANAGEMENT
There were some attempts, though generally not greatly effective ones, to introduce more modern management techniques as early as the 1880s.
Daniel Banoub — a geography professor at Memorial University whose research examines the historical-geographical political economy of resource extraction in Newfoundland and Labrador, with a focus on fisheries, aquaculture, and mining — wrote a book titled “Fishing Measures: A Critique of Desk-bound Reason” that investigates the introduction of fisheries science to Newfoundland and Labrador’s salt fishery between the 1880s and 1930s.
A cod hatchery on Dildo Island began construction in 1889 on the heels of the formation of the country’s Fisheries Commission in 1887, which Banoub said marked “the beginning of scientific state intervention in Newfoundland’s fisheries.”
The hatchery operated for only a few years before shutting down. The support it had from Newfoundland and Labrador’s newly formed department of fisheries — established in May 1893 — was swept away when “a financial crisis and a period of fiscal retrenchment intervened to kill the government’s interest in the program.”
COAKER’S CLASH WITH MERCHANTS
William Ford Coaker, the man who started the Fishermen’s Protective Union, also tried to bring a more scientific approach to the fishery after he was elected to office in 1919. As the minister of marine and fisheries, he sought to introduce new processing regulations, create a scientific fisheries bureau and collect fishing statistics.
Coaker’s regulations, however, “did not survive the articulated opposition of certain merchants to any government intervention in business,” Banoub wrote.
‘MAJOR DISCONNECT’
Introducing the broader range of expertise available from the federal department was presumably more of a benefit than a disadvantage, added Banoub.
Relocating fisheries management decisions effectively took some political power away from the Newfoundland merchants, who usually had held enough clout to scuttle decisions and policies that didn’t suit their interests.
“Part of me wonders if that would have continued on. … In some ways, maybe (Confederation) did kind of break some of that direct control over the fishery,” said Banoub.
“It’s hard to picture a different scenario.”
TAKING STOCK
The increased reliance on science in the management of the fishery has fostered a shift from a qualitative to a more quantitative approach that hasn’t worked out well, says Dean Bavington.
Bavington, a MUN geography professor who grew up around the fishery in the St. Anthony area, penned a book called “Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse.”
The book, released in 2010, is a study of the fishery leading up to the cod moratorium of 1992 and the two decades that followed.
FISH BANKRUPTCY
From the introduction of jiggers as a way to catch fish that were not biting to later methods such as longlines, cod seines, gill nets and, eventually, factory freezer trawlers, technology has affected how many fish could be taken from the water.
“Technology introduced after the jigger broke the relationship settlers had with cod that it was appropriate to only fish when they go for bait and, if you continue to do this, you will destroy the fish and the fishing community because everyone is going to become a harvester, competing with each other,” said Bavington.
In 1968, the cod quota was 810,000 pounds, the largest on record, and the fishery was being executed not just by inshore fishermen, but further offshore by large factory freezer trawlers that stayed at sea longer.
By 1977, the quota had fallen to 150,000 tonnes.
FOREIGN OVERFISHING
DFO blamed foreign overfishing and took measures, such as extending Canada’s fishing jurisdiction from a 12mile to a 200-mile limit.
Quotas were reduced with the belief less pressure would allow the resource to replenish to a healthier status.
The federal government even encouraged and helped build new boats and plants to handle the anticipated return.
By 1992, it was clear there had been a gross miscalculation, and the entire cod fishery was shut down. It remains closed today.
In the fall of 2023, DFO announced its latest studies had lifted northern cod out of the critical zone for the first time since the collapse. If it can remain in what DFO calls a “cautious zone,” there could be hope for revitalizing the cod fishery.
Bavington is doubtful cod will ever return to glory.
“Unless we have people who know about fish from experience out fishing and the fishery is organized by those people with that knowledge, we will continue to have what we have: which is the destruction of cod. … Where we are now is a bankrupt way of understanding fish,” said Bavington.
CULTURAL SHIFT
The way the fishery has been handled, said Bavington, has changed Newfoundland’s identity.
Those who execute the fishery are now known as professional fish harvesters, a change Bavington said has more of an agricultural connotation, but also hints at the pre-confederation notion that fishermen weren’t intelligent or skilled enough to govern themselves and needed Canada’s help.
Those who still execute the inshore fishery feel their traditional way of life is threatened by how much control a handful of large corporations have over the fishery.
All residents of Newfoundland are now restricted from catching cod for their dinner tables, limited to a recreational fishery permitted on summer weekends only.
“The fact we are exporting fish all over the world, but we don’t allow people to go out and catch it for themselves to eat — that’s been criminalized and now you’re called a poacher — that has fundamentally changed our culture,” said Bavington.
‘THEY MISMANAGED IT’
Retired fishing captain Wilfred Bartlett, 88, begs to differ with Richard Cashin when it comes to the impact Confederation had on the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery.
“They didn’t manage the fishery. They mismanaged it,” he said of the federal government’s handling of the resource.
Bartlett recalled how, in his early fishing days, not everyone pursuing the inshore fishery could access the deeper waters where the cod were sometimes found.
For the longest time, for instance, no one could access the winter spawning grounds off the Labrador coast because they were protected by sea ice.
That all changed, said Bartlett, when larger, icestrengthened fishing vessels were allowed to find and scoop up those large schools as they gathered to create the next generation.
“The cod that came ashore in Labrador and in northeastern Newfoundland came from the Hamilton Bank,” he explained. “For six months of the year, that (had been) protected by sea ice. … When you’re fishing any stock 365 days a year, 24/7, you’ll fish it (to) extinction.”
‘WASTED, WASTED, WASTED’
Before he retired from fishing in 1991, Bartlett received one of four Dfo-ordered expeditions sent around Newfoundland and Labrador to try to find out where all the cod went.
“We never caught 100 pounds of cod,” Bartlett said of the two-week mission that involved fishing 24/7 from the Horse Islands north to just past Belle Isle.
During those voyages, he heard many stories about some of the wasteful practises he says contributed to the collapse.
He said there was a place near St-pierre colloquially known as Stinky Bank because there was so much unwanted bycatch thrown away there that the rotting dead fish created an awful stench.
He was told about other vessels unable to handle how much fish they were landing that would dump fish that had frozen on the deck before it could be gutted.
Bartlett heard of some ships that would grind up unwanted fish, so the illegally dumped loads would sink or be less obvious to anyone who might investigate.
“Wasted, wasted, wasted, and they’re still doing it today,” Bartlett says.
‘THROWN OVERBOARD’
He’s also heard of how some vessels would overfish their quota just so they could land enough to keep and ensure they could pay their crew for the trip.
The rest, usually undersized fish that otherwise could have been harvested in the future, was dumped.
“You tell me that’s management. … That was going on all the time and everyone doing the same thing,” said Bartlett.
“How can the fish stand that? The future of the fishery was being thrown overboard.”
Bartlett isn’t sure if not joining Canada would have made much of a difference in how the fishery has been managed since Confederation.
“Greed is in the fishery — always was and always will be. … If it’s not managed right, that’s going to happen anyway,” he said.
He wonders if things might have been different if Newfoundland had joined the United States instead of Canada.
“Do you think if we were part of the U.S. that we’d still be giving allocations to foreigners to fish in our waters while our fishermen had nothing? No way in the world,” said Bartlett.
“Canada has never stood up for Newfoundland. … No one has the guts to make the right decisions. We passed it over to Ottawa, and manage it they did until there was nothing left. Nothing can change it now. That’s the sad part of it, and that’s why I’ll die a Newfoundlander and not a Canadian.”