Cod ban destroyed by loophole
Fishing continues despite species’ endangered status Boats exploiting moratorium flaw, grim report warns
HALIFAX— Thousands of tonnes of rare North Atlantic codfish are being scooped out of the sea and sold around the world despite an international moratorium on the endangered species, according to a report to be released today. The study by the World Wildlife Fund details a little- known fishery in which Canadian, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian boats exploit weak international rules to pluck the last cod from the sea. Two years ago, it says, factory trawlers took 88 per cent of the adult cod left on the southern Grand Banks.
“Everyone wonders why the cod aren’t coming back,” said Robert Rangeley, director of the Wildlife Fund’s Atlantic Marine Program. “ Well, they aren’t coming back because we didn’t stop fishing them.” Cod is just one of several species that disappeared off the Canadian coast in the 1990s, sparking an economic crisis in Newfoundland, and raising international alarm about the way humans exploit the ocean. When John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland more than 500 years ago, he reported cod so plentiful they could be caught by lowering weighted baskets in the water. The fishery sustained the island economy for more than four centuries, until the cod disappeared a decade ago. The federal government imposed a moratorium on cod fishing in 1993, which threw thousands of Newfoundlanders out of work and sparked an exodus that left dozens of fishing villages nearly empty. Canadian taxpayers chipped in more than $2 billion in special programs to help Newfoundlanders survive the moratorium.
Scientists and fishermen both expected cod stocks to recover, but that didn’t happen. In fact, the number of cod swimming around Newfoundland continued to decline. This year, Newfoundland cod was declared an endangered species. One key reason for the ongoing environmental disaster, according to a report to be unveiled today in St. John’s, is that commercial boats continued to take cod despite the moratorium. The cod was taken under socalled bycatch rules imposed by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, an international regulatory group. Its rules allow ships to keep fish caught inadvertently while pursuing other species. For instance, a ship fishing for halibut could keep cod that happened to land in its net.
Rangeley says fishing companies have exploited that rule to deliberately fish banned species. “The evidence is staggering that this is deliberate,” said Rangeley. “ The profits are coming from the bycatch, from the moratorium species.” Cod is not the only species in trouble, but it has become an international symbol of the collapsing ecosystems beneath the waves, and of humanity’s inability to deal with that disaster.
In 1967, 400,000 tonnes of adult cod were swimming around the southern end of the fabled Grand Banks fishing grounds near Newfoundland, according to Canadian and international data cited in the World Wildlife Fund study. By 1993, when Canada imposed the moratorium, the adult cod population in that area had dropped to 14,000 tonnes. A decade later, it had dropped to 6,100 tonnes. That same year, 5,400 tonnes of cod bycatch was taken from the southern Grand Banks and sold on commercial markets.
“ The amount taken as bycatch doubled almost every year after the moratorium,” said Rangeley.
“ In 2003, the bycatch was almost 90 per cent of the entire biomass ( in that area). There is real urgency here. If the bycatch isn’t reduced by at least 80 per cent, those fish are gone forever, they are never coming back.”
Rangeley called on Canada to lead a crusade to establish strong rules that will force all countries to respect fishery agreements. He also called on companies to change the way they fish to avoid snagging other species by mistake. And he called on consumers to pressure politicians on the issue.