by Farley Mowat
The slaughter was equally enormous elsewhere in the region. In Cape Breton and the Gulf, according to Nicolas Denys, “Scarcely an harbour [exists] where there are not several fishing vessels... taking every day 15,000 [to] 30,000 fish... this fish constitutes a kind of inexhaustible manna.”
Near the end of the sixteenth century Richard Whitbourne, another fishing skipper, wrote that the average lading for any given ship tallied 125,000 cod. These were from virgin cod populations producing fish up to six or seven feet in length and weighing as much as 200 pounds, in contrast with today’s average weight of about six pounds. In Whitbourne’s time it was still in the fifteen- to twenty-pound range and the annual cod fishery in the northeastern approaches yielded about 368,000 tons.
By 1620 the cod fleet exceeded 1,000 vessels, many making two voyages annually: a summer one for dry cod and a winter trip from which the cod were carried back to Europe in pickle as “green fish.” Yet, despite the enormous destruction, there was no apparent indication that cod stocks were diminishing. As the seventeenth century neared its end, travellers such as Baron Lahontan were still writing about the cod as if its population had no bounds.
“You can scarce imagine what quantities of Cod-fish were catched by our Seamen in the space of a quarter of an hour... the Hook was no sooner at the bottom than a Fish was catched... [the men] had nothing to do but to throw in, and take up without interruption... However, as we were so plentifully entertained at the cost of these Fishes, so such of them as continued in the Sea made sufficient reprisals upon the Corps of a Captain and several Soldiers, who dy’d of the Scurvy, and were thrown over-board.”
The first hint that the destruction might be excessive (and it is a veiled hint) comes from Charlevoix in the 1720s. After first telling us that “the number of the cod seems to equal that of the grains of sand,” he adds that “For more than two centuries there have been loaded with them [at the Grand Banks] from two to three hundred [French] ships annually, notwithstanding [which] the diminution is not perceivable. It might not, however, be amiss to discontinue this fishery from time to time [on the Grand Bank], the more so as the gulph of St. Lawrence [together with] the River for more than sixty leagues, the coasts of Acadia, those of... Cape Breton and of Newfoundland, are no less replenished with this fish than the great bank. These are true mines, which are more valuable, and require much less expense than those of Peru and Mexico.” That Charlevoix was not exaggerating the value of the cod fishery is confirmed by the fact that, in 1747, 564 French vessels manned by 27,500 fishermen brought home codfish worth a million pounds sterling—a gigantic sum for those days.
At about this same time, New Englanders, who had by now depleted the lesser stocks of cod available on the southern banks, began moving into the northern fishery. They did so with such energy that, by 1783, over 600 American vessels were fishing the Gulf of St. Lawrence, mostly for cod, although they also caught immense quantities of herring. In that year, at least 1,500 ships of all nations were working the North American “cod mines” for all they were worth.
By 1800, English- and French-based vessels had become notably fewer, but Newfoundlanders, Canadians, and Americans more than made up the loss. In 1812, 1,600 fishing vessels, largely American, were in the Gulf, with as many more Newfoundland and Nova Scotia ships fishing the outer banks and the Atlantic coast of Labrador.
Those were the days of the great fleets of “white wings,” when the sails of fishing schooners seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. In addition to this vessel fishery, thousands of inshore men fished cod in small boats from every little cove and harbour. Vesselmen and shoremen alike still mostly fished in the old way with hooks and lines because “the glut of cod” was still so great that nothing more sophisticated was needed.
In 1876, John Rowan went aboard “a schooner cod-fishing close to shore... They were fishing in about three fathoms of water and we could see the bottom actually paved with codfish. I caught a dozen in about fifteen minutes; my next neighbour [a crewman] on the deck of the schooner, caught three times as many, grumbling all the time that it was the worst fishing season he had ever known.”
Between 1899 and 1904, the annual catch of cod (and of haddock, which in the salt-fish business was treated as cod) approached a million tons. During those years, Newfoundland alone annually exported about 1,200,000 quintals of dry fish, representing about 400,000 tons of cod, live weight. By 1907, the Newfoundland catch had risen to nearly 430,000 tons; and there were then some 1,600 vessels, of many nationalities, fishing the Grand Banks.
But now there was a chill over the Banks—one that did not come from the almost perpetual fog. Cod were getting harder to catch, and every year it seemed to take a little longer to make up a voyage. At this juncture, nobody so much as breathed the possibility that the Banks were being over-fished. Instead, one of the age-old fisherman’s explanations for a shortage was invoked: the cod had changed their ways and, temporarily, one hoped, gone somewhere else.
The early nineteenth-century discovery of immense schools of cod along the Labrador coast even as far north as Cape Chidley was seen as confirmation that the fish had indeed changed their grounds. In actual fact the Labrador cod comprised a distinct and, till then, virgin population. They did not stay that way for long. By 1845, 200 Newfoundland vessels were fishing “down north” and by 1880, up to 1,200. As many as 30,000 Newfoundlanders (“floaters” if they fished from anchored vessels, and “stationers” if they fished from shore bases) in 1880 were making almost 400,000 quintals of salt cod on the Labrador coast alone.
The Labrador cod soon went the way of all flesh. The catch steadily declined thereafter until, by mid-twentieth century, the once far-famed Labrador fishery collapsed. Attempts were again made to ascribe the disappearance of the Labrador fish to one of those mythical migrations. This time it did not wash. The fact was that King Cod was becoming scarce throughout the whole of his wide North Atlantic realm. In 1956, cod landings for Grand Banks/Newfoundland waters were down to 80,000 metric tonnes—about a fifth of what they had been only half a century earlier.
When a prey animal becomes scarce in nature, its predators normally decrease in numbers, too, permitting the prey an opportunity for recovery. Industrial man works in the opposite way. As cod became scarcer, so did pressure on the remaining stocks mount. New, bigger, more destructive ships came into service and the bottom trawl, which scours the bed of the ocean like a gigantic harrow, destroying spawn and other life, almost totally replaced older fishing methods. Scarcity brought ever-rising prices, which in turn attracted more and more fishermen. During the 1960s, fleets of big draggers and factory ships were coming to the Banks from a dozen European and Asian countries to engage in a killing frenzy over what remained of the cod populations. The result was that, between 1962 and 1967, cod landings increased until, in 1968, the catch topped two million tons. Soon thereafter, the whole northwest Atlantic cod fishery disintegrated for want of fish to catch.
Canada’s extension of economic control to 200 miles offshore saved the cod in her waters from extinction. The stocks, which by conservative estimate had been reduced to less than 2 per cent of their aboriginal level, are now increasing, though at probably nowhere near the rate predicted by the statisticians whose task it is to justify government and fishing industry policies. Certainly the cod stock can never hope to regain even a semblance of its former substance so long as we continue the commercial annihilation of the baitfishes that are the cod’s staff of life—a matter dealt with later in this chapter.
After the Second World War, the fishing business, which in the past had mainly been composed of small companies, began to exhibit symptoms of the gigantism that was sweeping the industrial world. By the 1960s it was largely in the hands of powerful cartels or national governments. Their reaction to the depredation of the once “inexhaustible” ranks of the cod was that of true devotees to the holy principle of the “bottom line.” I
nstead of using their wealth, power, and influence to reduce and control the slaughter and so ensure a future for the cod fishery, they engaged in furious competition with one another to catch what cod were left. When not enough could be found to maintain “profitability,” they quite literally spread their nets for whatever substitutes might serve to keep them in the black. The result was, and remains, an orgy of destruction on a scale unique in the long history of human predation in the seas.
Having seen what happened to the cod, let us look briefly at what has happened, and is happening, to the other major commercial fish species generically referred to as groundfish. Because the subject is so vast, I have restricted my exposition of it to the waters of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks where, however, the destruction has been typical of what has taken place almost everywhere.
Although never approaching cod in abundance the closely related haddock bore the first brunt of the generalized assault upon Atlantic groundfishes that began with the decline in cod stocks. By 1952, haddock, which had previously been a by-catch species (one taken more or less accidentally during the fishery for cod), was being fished at the rate of about 40,000 metric tonnes a year. At first it was the special prey of Portuguese and Spanish draggers. These vessels used such small mesh in their trawls that schools of young haddock were dragged to the surface along with their larger brethren. Since they were too small to be of any value, they were simply shovelled overboard—quite dead.
A pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force who flew patrols over Canada’s coastal waters in the 1950s has described for me what the haddock fishery looked like from the air.
“One morning we raised forty or fifty paired [two vessels towing one enormous trawl between them] Spanish draggers working Green Bank. It was a nice clear day and we could see them away off. What we couldn’t understand was—some of them seemed to have a tail. It was shining in the sunlight like a streamer of floating silver paper a couple of miles long. We diverted to see what the devil it was, and when we came over them at about 2,000 feet, we saw it was dead fish. There must have been millions of them stretching out astern of each boat that had just hauled its net and was sorting the catch on deck. Undersized fish were going overside like confetti. It was actually kind of pretty, but our radio op, who was a Bluenoser from Lunenburg [a major Nova Scotian fishing port], was so pissed off he figured we ought to bomb the bastards. It was young haddock they were dumping, and what a bloody waste; but apparently that was the regular thing with the Spanish fleet.”
In 1955, ships working the Grand Banks landed 104,000 tonnes of haddock—and probably killed and dumped that much again. Although everyone in the business knew what was happening, nobody did a thing about it. The useless massacre of young haddock continued unabated. By 1961 the draggers were only able to catch 79,000 tonnes and, soon thereafter, the haddock fishery collapsed. By 1969 it had been abandoned. A report issued by the Canadian government provides the epitaph.
“Most year classes [the young born in any given year] since 1955 have been complete failures. This, as well as heavy fishing pressure... has caused a reduction in haddock stocks to an extremely low level... there are no prospects for improvement in the immediate future.”
Indeed, there were none; nor does there seem to be much of a prospect in the distant future either since, in 1984, haddock were still commercially extinct in Newfoundland/Grand Banks waters—and almost everywhere else as well.
The redfish is a large-eyed, deep-water fish that bears its young alive and is both slow-growing and slow to mature sexually. Hardly fished at all before 1953, it came under direct assault on the offshore banks in 1956 with landings of 77,000 tons. Marketed as ocean perch, it proved so profitable that entire segments of the multinational fishing fleet concentrated on it, landing 330,000 tonnes in the single year of 1959. This was followed by a predictable decline to landings of 82,000 tonnes in 1962. This fishery would soon have been exhausted had it not been for the introduction of new types of mid-water trawls and the discovery of a relatively untouched population in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This precipitated a new massacre, which in its turn began to fail in the early 1970s for want of victims.
By that time almost all the larger and reproductively active redfish had been killed, leading Canada’s foremost expert on the species, Dr. E.J. Sandeman, to predict that “prospects are poor for the next several years, and the redfish fishery is expected to decline.”
A most accurate prediction. At the time of writing, the remaining redfish contribute only peripherally to the commercial fishery. There is little evidence of any significant recovery in its stocks.
Flatfish include several exploitable species of groundfish. The northwestern Atlantic forms that have suffered most, because they were most abundant, have been the enormous halibut, together with the sole-like plaice, yellowtail, and witch flounder.
All have been disastrously over-fished since about 1962, when it came their turn to fill the insatiable maws of draggers and factory ships. Before that date, they had been virtually ignored. The halibut, which could measure nine feet in length and weigh close to 1,000 pounds, was of only peripheral interest to the fisheries until recently. In earlier times it was even considered a nuisance because it would take cod bait and so waste the time and sometimes break the gear of cod fishermen. Lieutenant Chappell of the British Royal Navy, doing patrol duty on the Grand Banks in 1812, reported that “The fishermen of Newfoundland are much exasperated whenever an unfortunate halibut happens to seize their baits: they are frequently known in such cases to wreak their vengeance on the poor fish by thrusting a piece of wood through its gills and in that condition turning it adrift. The efforts which are made by the tortured fish to get its head beneath the water afford a high source of amusement.”
Although, prior to 1960, some few halibut were landed by inshore fishermen from Newfoundland waters and sold either pickled or fully salted, it was not until 1963 that the species was attacked by the commercial fishing fleet. Catches began at about 220 tons in 1964 and leapt to at least 40,000 tons by 1970. Thereafter, as was ever the case, the catch declined until today the halibut has become a rarity in seas where it once abounded.
The several species of smaller flatfish in northern waters had no commercial value, and were not fished at all except for cod and lobster bait, prior to the post-Second World War development of effective mass-freezing techniques. Even as late as 1962, the total catch of all species of flatfish was under 33,000 tonnes, most of which was taken as a by-catch. In the following year, plaice was deliberately sought after, and yellowtail and witch flounder soon joined the list of exploitable species. By 1966, the catch of these three had topped 154,000 tonnes. The catastrophic decline that followed elicited these cautious comments from a Canadian fisheries biologist in 1976.
“The heavy exploitation of American Plaice on the Grand Bank has resulted in a sharp redaction in the catch per hour... There is every indication that the [yellowtail flounder] total removal levels [read: catch] will decline drastically in the immediate future... With the reduction of the previously unexploited stock biomass [of witch flounder] catch per hour has been greatly reduced.”
All of which meant, in simple terms, that the flounder fishery was foundering.
And so it goes. Today, industry spokesmen and scientific advisers are extolling the potential profitability of a whole new range of species that might be fished in place of those that have been commercially exterminated. These include such deep-water and even abyssal species as the wolf fish, the porbeagle (a fancy name for the mackerel shark), and a small shark called the spiny dogfish. The thorny skate is also being touted, as are the grenadiers (otherwise known as rat-tails), which live as much as three-quarters of a mile down in the black deeps. New fishing techniques will be required to “harvest” these “resources,” but this should pose no problem to technological men who can travel to the moon and back. It will be interesting to see under what evocative na
mes these species will be marketed.
At this point it would be well to look at one of the major justifications advanced to excuse the fishing industry’s biocidal activities. This is the contention that the industry is duty bound to constantly increase its landings in order to improve the supply of protein for a human population, much of which lives on the edge of starvation.
This is blatant hypocrisy. In actual fact, the fishing industry of the developed nations, which is by far the largest and most destructive, achieves just the opposite result. Most of its production goes, not to starving peoples, but to those who are already the world’s best fed, and who can afford high-priced food. In order to produce high-value (and high-profit) products, usually fillets, the Western fishing industry processes its catches in such a way that as much as 40 per cent of what could be used as human food is either completely wasted or is downgraded to make fish meal for animal feeds or fertilizer. On top of which, of course, there is the overriding fact that, by commercially exterminating species after species of the more nutritious and abundant fishes in the sea, the modern commercial fishing industry is actually guaranteeing an increased burden of starvation for the hungry hordes who fill the human future.
This is a new phenomenon. Until 1939, the bulk of the groundfish catch from the northwestern Atlantic was processed as salt fish, a product that preserved as much as 90 per cent of the edible portion of the catch and that was sold at a price affordable to impoverished peoples, for whom it provided a staple source of protein. Profit was certainly a central motive in the industry then, but it was not the all-embracing one it has since become.
Without doubt the most numerous fishes in the seas washing the eastern coasts of North America are still the smaller kinds collectively known as baitfishes. They acquired the name not so much because they provided bait for fishermen as because they were the basic food that sustained other sea animals ranging from sea trout through salmon, cod, halibut, and tuna all the way up the scale to seals, porpoises, and whales.
