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The Collapse of the Newfoundland Cod
cause and effect in nature or society
As a result, the stock was overestimated, and quotas were set too high until the collapse could no longer be ignored. Around 30,000 people lost their jobs when the fishery closed, in what has been called the largest single layoff in Canadian history.
The decline had begun decades earlier, when large factory trawlers arrived from Europe and elsewhere. Unlike local boats, these ships could fish all year and freeze their catch at sea, and nothing in the rules prevented catches from rising to several times their earlier levels.
More than thirty years later, cod numbers have recovered only partly, and scientists believe that changes in the wider ecosystem may now be slowing their return.
Nor did scientific advice do much to slow the fall. Estimates of the stock relied partly on catch rates from commercial boats, which stayed high because modern equipment could find the remaining fish wherever they gathered.
For almost five hundred years, the waters off Newfoundland supported one of the richest cod fisheries in the world. In 1992, the Canadian government closed it completely.