Cod Fishing In Newfoundland
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Cod fishing in Newfoundland was carried out at a
subsistence A subsistence economy is an economy directed to basic subsistence (the provision of food, clothing and shelter) rather than to the market. Definition "Subsistence" is understood as supporting oneself and family at a minimum level. Basic subsiste ...
level for centuries, but large scale fishing began shortly after the European arrival in the North American continent in 1492, with the waters being found to be preternaturally plentiful, and ended after intense
overfishing Overfishing is the removal of a species of fish (i.e. fishing) from a body of water at a rate greater than that the species can replenish its population naturally (i.e. the overexploitation of the fishery's existing Fish stocks, fish stock), resu ...
with the collapse of the fisheries in 1992.


Native Canadian fishing

The
Beothuk The Beothuk ( or ; also spelled Beothuck) were a group of Indigenous peoples in Canada, Indigenous people of Canada who lived on the island of Newfoundland (island), Newfoundland. The Beothuk culture formed around 1500 CE. This may have been ...
(called ''
Skræling (Old Norse and , plural ) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Nors ...
s'' by the
Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9 ...
) were the indigenous people of Newfoundland. The meat portions of their diet was caribou, marine mammals and fish. With the arrival of British and French coastal settlements, the Beothuk were forced inland, and the lack of their normal food source contributed to a decrease in the Beothuk population. Beothuk numbers began to dwindle rapidly due to a combination of factors directly relating to
European colonization of the Americas During the Age of Discovery, a large scale colonization of the Americas, involving a number of European countries, took place primarily between the late 15th century and the early 19th century. The Norse explored and colonized areas of Europe a ...
, Inuit and Mi'kmaq migration, and by the 19th Century, the tribe no longer existed.


15th and 16th centuries

After his voyage in 1497,
John Cabot John Cabot ( ; 1450 – 1499) was an Italians, Italian navigator and exploration, explorer. His 1497 voyage to the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England, Henry VII, King of England is the earliest known Europe ...
's crew reported that "the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets" and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals "so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them." In the early sixteenth century, fishermen from England, France, Spain and Portugal learned the best places to fish for
cod Cod (: cod) is the common name for the demersal fish genus ''Gadus'', belonging to the family (biology), family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gad ...
in the waters off
Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...
, and how best to preserve the fish for the journey home. The French, Spanish and Portuguese fishermen tended to fish on the
Grand Banks The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are a series of underwater plateaus south-east of the island of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. The Grand Banks are one of the world's richest fishing grounds, supporting Atlantic cod, swordfi ...
and other banks out to sea, where fish were always available. They salted their fish on board ship and it was not dried until brought to Europe. The English fishermen, however, concentrated on fishing inshore where the fish were only to be found at certain times of the year when the fish migrateds These fishermen used small boats and returned to shore every day. They developed a system of light salting, washing and drying onshore, which became very popular because the fish could remain edible for years. Many of their coastal sites gradually developed into settlements, notably St. John's, now the provincial capital. In 1585 the Portuguese fishing fleet was raided by the English, who were at war with Portugal as it was part of the Kingdom of Spain. Sir John Hawkins devised the raid as a way to rob Portugal and Spain of experienced mariners, and capture ships. Led by Sir Bernard Drake, the raid was a disaster for the Portuguese, who did not send a fishing fleet the year after. In the late sixteenth century the Spanish and Portuguese
fisheries Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life or, more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a., fishing grounds). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farm ...
were terminated, mainly as a result of the failure of the
Spanish Armada The Spanish Armada (often known as Invincible Armada, or the Enterprise of England, ) was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, commanded by Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aristocrat without previous naval ...
, and thereafter the English and French shared the fishery every summer until 1904 when the French agreed to relinquish it to the Newfoundland residents. Together with the cod industry of
New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
, Newfoundland's exported salt cod was instrumental in providing the cheap (low-quality) high-protein food necessary to sustain slavery in the Caribbean. The role of Newfoundland became particularly important following the American War of Independence when New England's traders lost access to British colonies, leading to a famine among slaves between 1780 and 1787. Historian Mark Kurlansky notes that eventually, "Nova Scotia and Newfoundland took up the slack, and their fisheries too became largely geared for low-grade West India saltfish."


20th century fishing methods and the fishery collapse

In 1904 the British and French governments signed the
Entente Cordiale The Entente Cordiale (; ) comprised a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, French Republic which saw a significant improvement in Fr ...
which, among many other matters, extinguished French claims to Newfoundland in exchange for the
Îles de Los The Îles de Los () are an island group lying off Conakry, Guinea, on the west coast of Africa. Their name is derived from the Portuguese ''Ilhas dos Ídolos'', meaning "islands of the idols". They are located about off the headland limiting t ...
off West Africa. In 1951 factory fishing began with new super-trawlers such as the 'Fairtry'; 280 feet long and 2,600 gross tons. The cod catch peaked in 1968 at 810,000 tons, approximately three times more than the maximum yearly catch achieved before the super-trawlers. Approximately eight million tons of cod were caught between 1647 and 1750, a period encompassing 25 to 40 cod generations. The factory trawlers took the same amount in 15 years. The industry collapsed entirely in the early 1990s owing to overfishing and debatably, greed, lack of foresight and poor local administration. By 1993 six cod populations had collapsed, forcing a belated moratorium on fishing. Spawning biomass had decreased by at least 75% in all stocks, by 90% in three of the six stocks, and by 99% in the case of 'northern' cod, previously the largest cod fishery in the world. After a 10-year moratorium on fishing begun in 1992, the cod had still not returned. It was thought that the local ecosystem might have changed, one possibility being that greater numbers of
capelin The capelin or caplin (''Mallotus villosus'') is a small forage fish of the smelt family found in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic oceans. In summer, it grazes on dense swarms of plankton at the edge of the ice shelf. Larger capel ...
, which used to provide food for the cod, might be eating the juvenile cod. The waters appeared to be dominated by crab and shrimp rather than fish. However, by 2011 it became apparent that the fisheries were returning to their original abundance, just more slowly than had been anticipated.


Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

The ''Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement'' (CETA) between Canada and the European Union is a
Free Trade Agreement A free trade agreement (FTA) or treaty is an agreement according to international law to form a free-trade area between the cooperating state (polity), states. There are two types of trade agreements: Bilateralism, bilateral and Multilateralism, m ...
which is still under negotiation as of May 2015.G+M: "Newfoundland and Labrador says talks at stalemate with Ottawa over fish fund"
26 May 2015
The provincial government has argued that the Federal government of Canada in Ottawa reneged on a deal to pay $280 million in exchange for its relinquishment of minimum processing requirements as part of CETA. Those rules helped protect jobs in fish plants, especially in rural areas hit hard by the cod moratorium since 1992.


See also

* Cod fisheries *
Collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery In 1992, Atlantic cod, Northern cod biomass (ecology), populations fell to 1% of historical levels, in large part from decades of overfishing. The Canadian Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Canada), Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John ...


References

{{Reflist


Further reading

* ''Outport Adaptations: Social Indicators Through Newfoundland's Cod Crisis'', Hamilton & Butler, Univ of New Hampshir

Fishing in Canada Economy of Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries law