What happened to the Grand Banks Cod
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The Grand Banks once supported one of the
largest stocks of cod in the world, now mostly
gone from overfishing. In the Barents sea,
same fish same overfishing problems but today, they
stil have their fish. So what needed to change
in Canada?
It turned out cod, was made of meat. And bigger
cod was made out of more meat.
Their flesh is soft and flaky and high in
protein. They're built for catching prey in
quick bursts but give almost no fight on a
line or against nets. To feed they open their
giant mouths and take in anything they can
see. They'll even eat their own young. You
can shape a piece of lead like a baby cod
and they'll try to eat it. All this makes
them a great commercial.
The grand banks have been fished since before
settlers had come to north america . Among
other countries, It's been fished by Spain,
Portugal, Russia, Germany, France, the United
states and Greenland. and Canada.
The early described the grand banks as inexhaustible.
But that's just because for centuries people
fished using wind powered boats with oar powered
dories to send out long lines. Then they would
salt the cod and dry them on land. Now they're
bigger, covered and gas powered ships, with
bottom trawl nets, refrigeration and procesing
facilities that lets them go out further,
longer, catch more fish, keep them fresher
and with less effort.
Because of the new technologies, between 1958
and 1977 the catch of cod reached record levels. Most of it was caught by the non-Canadian offshore ships.
Canada pushed for 200 mile limits within which
any resources would belong to the countries
they border.
Only two areas were outside Canadian control.
But rather than conserve the resource, through
subsidies Canada expanded its own offshore
fleet to exploit the gap left by the foreign
ships.
The government can transfer money to fishers
in many ways:
But the largest of these subsidies was the unemployment
insurance, meant to motivate people to enter
and stay in the fishery. But the problem was....
.....that it was motivating people to enter and stay in the fishery.A simplified predator and prey relationship
goes like this:
If predator population get's too large and
eat too much of their prey, then prey numbers
decline. Later the predators might not have
enough food so they'll die off a bit. Which
decreases pressure on the prey population
who can increase in numbers. Which in turn
gives the predators more food allowing them
to increase in numbers. And so on.
When the government gives money to the industry
it alters that feedback loop. The industry
doesn't grow and shrink with the resource,
and the fleet and fish processors grow to
overcapacity.
Between 1981 and 1990, employment insurance
was 50-60% of a fisherman's total income.
Which was bad.
But subsidies might not be the only problem.
Technology might allow the fishermen to find
and catch fish faster than the fish can reproduce.
So the government set a quota, of how much
they're allowed to catch. But obviously it
was being set too high.
Back then, quotas were based on the maximum
sustainable yield. Let' s say this is the
maximum population the fish can reach because
of food and habitat constraints. Let's say
if you take this much it will grow back to
max population. Or if you take this much it
will grow back. The maximum sustainable yield
is the spot where you can take the most with
the population growing back. Catching more
than this is "unsustainable", so quotas are
set a bit below for safety.
But settings quotas like this only looks at
one organism at a time.
For example, if Mackeral eats Herring eggs,
and Herring eats Cod eggs. and cod are probably
eating their own eggs. Fishing herring can
affect the other population of the others.
And they all eat different things at different
life stages.
Also it ignores the size and age of the fish.
Cod reach sexually maturity at 2-4 years of
age. They never stop growing and can be gigantic.
The bigger they are the more and better the
eggs they produce. But when you fish them
a lot, they're population is smaller and younger.
So the MSY isn't a good representation of
the fishes productivity. On top of that it's
almost impossible to know how much fish there
are. They're basically invisible because they're
under a bunch of water.... and they move around.
That's why realistic statistics are
presented with, among many other ignored features,
a range to account for the uncertaintly and
assumptions.
So when the researchers presented their findings
like: "OK, now you should be conservative
because we don't actually know how many fish
there are. But we think there's probably maybe
somewhere between 150 000 - 200 000 tons of fish..."
" 200 000 tons of fish... sounds good" said
the government.
And the researchers couldn't work around the
politicians and tell people what was really
going on or they could lose their jobs.
Departmental guidelines restricts speaking
out against the position of the department.
A former DFO employee said the government
would "hide negative any negative information
that took the gloss off what they presented.
Jake Rice, former head of DFO's ground fish
division admitted:
"you can only tell half the answer because
the other half is still being debated in Ottawa
for its political sensitivities"
Hiding a part of the whole truth is just lying.
At least that's what I learned from Saturday
morning cartoons.
Since the stock was falling, the inshore fishermen
complained about their falling catches. But
they were ignored by the government.
They said, "the offshore fleet aren't complaining
and they're still catching loads!"
But the offshore fleet were using new technologies
and navigations systems to target the fish
exactly where they were hiding. Lots were
still being caught but their numbers were falling.
So when the estimates came back uncertain, but low,
the government looked at them with
a positive light because they wanted a return
on their investments and they didn't want
to piss off offshore fishermen by cutting quotas.
This is centralized decision making at its worst.
Even in the last year before the collapse
when the researchers recommended serious quota
cuts, the minister said the quotas were so
low they were "demented".
Basically the government didn't want to make
a decision that would create a loss of jobs.
But, to create jobs or to preserve jobs, those
aren't proper goals. If they were the government
could do anything to make jobs and people
would be happy. They could subsidize the Face
Digging Industy. Specializing in digging ditches
with your face. With Competitive wages.
Everybody wants to have a job, so they can
buy bagels and exercise equipment from the
TV. But that's not why a job exists. Jobs
exist because the work is needed or is in
demand. A job isn't justifiable by any other
reason. Decisions shouldn't be made with the
employment rate in mind.
But the best way to maintian fishing jobs,
is to make sure there's fish. Making sure
there are fish is like the other thing you
have to think about. Other than who gets to
fish, and how you're gonna get them outta
the water.
So after the collapse when everyone lost their
jobs.
The cod didn't come back like they thought
they would. Government warlocks sensed that
seals were responsible. So the government
increased seal hunting subsidies and quotas.
Buuuut it didn't help.
Let's look somewhere less stupid
In the late 80s in Barents sea, the Northern
Norwegian fishers had an almost identical
problem. Like in Newfoundland their policy
makers and researchers had expected their
stock to increase but in 1989 saw that the
fish population was declining from overfishing.
They had as much subsidization and government
control and they
had manage it with other countries, mainly
Russia.
But when the researcher came back and recommended
a drastic cut in the fish quota to 100 000 tons.
The government said... OK.
People lost their jobs. There were huge increases
in depression and alcoholism, outmigration...
poor economic times that they hadn't seen
since the great depression. It was all the
things the Canadian government wanted to avoid
on their hands. But, since the quotas were
cut while the stock still had some life, the
fish population rose. And continued to rise.
Today they have the healthiest and largest
stock of cod in the world and in 2013 the
quota was set for a million tons.
So what was the difference? Was it just a
difference in leadership competence?
Maybe, but there are at least 3 other differences.
The Marine Research Insitute, while a government
body, was separate from the central management
authority. So the research wasn't influenced
by the politicians, who can worry about their
image more than the truth.
Secondly, in the decade after the decline
the Norwegian government cut basically all
subsidization of the fishing industry, to
reduce overcapacity.
Finally in Norway the fishers had strong local
governments, with elected officials. They
were only an advisory body to the government
and didn't have a lot of power on paper, but
things couldn't easily be imposed on them,
and decisions generally went through them.
This increased communication and trust.
With so many competing interests over such
a large area, government control is typically
the go-to management scheme. But without a
little communication or co-management you
get governments ignoring fishermen, and fishermen
hating the government and refusing to follow
new rules.
Fisherman: "And not only me, every fisherman
on this island, we're going fishing!"
In the end the government doesn't have to
deal with the social or economic effects like
they think they do. Their just the ones that
make the decisions.
.. you can tell things that are alive from
things that are not alive. It's also pretty
easy to tell things that alive from things
that are dead. But.. what is life? There isn't
really a straight forward definition, but
a set of descriptors that say what life generally
has. But that's sorta like explaining what
a tampon is by describing the parts of a tampon.
But never saying it's a thing you stuff up
a vagina to absorb the blue liquid that girls
excrete. The best overall description is probably
that life characterizes objects that have
signalling and self sustaining processes....