Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

by Mark Kurlansky

  The collapse of the Soviet Union destabilized many fishing agreements. Russia has become a major cod fisher, and cod has become almost the equivalent of cash in the Russian Barents Sea fishery. The reason the Canadians have been buying Russian cod processed in Norway is that Russia has been flooding the Norwegian market.

  With the Atlantic long overworked by Europeans, the action has been switching to the Pacific, where not only are there large Japanese, Russian, American, and Korean fleets, but the Chinese, who do not have a history of international cooperation, have been notably enlarging their fishing capacity.

  Replacing the Atlantic with Pacific fisheries is an old idea. Pacific cod was one of the reasons the United States bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867. But since the major markets were far away along the Atlantic, the Pacific cod did not have the same success as the Atlantic cod. Nevertheless, in 1890, a half million Pacific cod were landed. An 1897 book by an American scholar, James Davie Butler, suggested that with the alternative of a Pacific cod fishery, the only remaining bone of contention between the United States and Canada, cod fisheries, would be less important, and the way would now be cleared for “eventual union with Canada.”

  But the Pacific cod is a different fish, its flesh less prized. It does not migrate, and it does not appear to live more than twelve years. More important, the catch has never measured up to that of its Atlantic cousin. Instead, walleye pollock has become the prize of the northern Pacific, “the cod of our times,” as a Gorton’s employee put it, and that fish is becoming so overfished that not only its stocks but its predators, sea lions and several species of seabirds, have dramatically declined since the mid-1970s.

  Marine ecology is complex and tightly interwoven. When large factory ships in the North Sea overfish sand eels and other small fish that are ground into fish meal for heating fuel in Denmark, not only cod but seabirds go hungry. In 1986, seal herds ranged south in the North Sea and ate the coastal fish off of Norway because they were famished from the overfishing of capelin. Fishermen were calling for a seal hunt to save the North Sea fisheries from the seal. In 1995, both Norway and Canada rescinded their ban on seal hunting because the populations were growing and they eat cod.

  In the late 1950s, Canada’s seal hunt had become a target of environmentalists when high prices for seal pelts and a huge herd had drawn packs of ruthless, unskilled amateur hunters with helicopters to the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts. In 1964, the anger of animal lovers throughout the world was stirred by a film made by Artek, a Montreal film company, that depicted a seal being skinned alive. The international protest did not abate when it was revealed that the skinner had been paid by the film company and that two of the other “hunters” turned out to be part of the film crew. In 1983, after intensive pressure from environmental groups culminated with a European Community boycott of seal products, Canada finally banned seal hunting, a traditional activity in Newfoundland and Labrador.

  Not surprisingly, the 1995 reopening of the seal hunt met with national and international condemnation from environmentalist and animal-rights groups. The seal defenders claimed that there was no scientific basis for the seal hunt. Some even denied that seals eat cod. Before protecting the seal became a cause célèbre, everyone in Newfoundland knew that seals ate cod. The familiar label of the leading Newfoundland soft-drink company, G. H. Gaden, is a seal on an ice floe with the words keep cool. But in the less politically correct nineteenth century, a cod was in the seal’s mouth.

  According to the Canadian government, the seal-hunting ban caused the harp seal population to double to 4.8 million, and if the ban had not been rescinded, it would be expected to be at 6 million by 2000. Seals eat enormous quantities of fish and are particularly disliked by fishermen because they are wasteful. Like the average North American consumer, gray, harbor, and harp seals do not like to deal with fish bones. They tear into the soft belly of the cod and leave most of the rest. “Seals don’t have to eat a lot of cod to have a big impact,” said George Rose. “It doesn’t mean we have to declare war on the seal. But we have to control the seal population.” One Canadian journalist, recalling Brigitte Bardot’s 1977 campaign in which she posed on an ice floe with a stuffed baby seal, suggested that the French actress pose hugging a codfish.

  Given the interdependence of species, the fundamental question is whether other species—not just the seals but the phytoplankton, the zooplankton, the capelin, the seabirds, and the whales—will wait fifteen years for cod to return. Nature may have even less patience than politicians. “Whatever will work is going to work. It will not necessarily come out the same way,” said Rose. If the species that were eaten by cod become plentiful because the cod are not there to prey on them, other species may move in, and if the intruders are successful, there might not be enough food to support a large cod population again. Some biologists worry that rays, skates, and dogfish, which are small sharks, may already be moving in.

  In addition, an unwanted relative has already shown up: the arctic cod (Boreogadus saida). This may not be bad for the marine ecology, but it is very bad news for fishermen. Arctic cod are about eight inches long and until now have been deemed of little commercial value. Because they are a much smaller fish, the adults do not compete with the Atlantic cod for food, but the young do. Even worse, arctic cod eat Atlantic cod eggs and larvae.

  The arctic cod is one of several more northerly species that seem to have expanded their range south into Newfoundland and Labrador waters at about the time the cod vanished. The other two, snow crab and shrimp, have been very profitable. Traditionally in Newfoundland, crabbing has been of a lower social order and fishermen have resisted it, but the Asian market for snow crab is extremely lucrative and several Newfoundlanders became wealthy in the mid-1990s from it. The landed value of snow crab in 1995 was the highest in dollars of any catch in the history of Newfoundland fisheries.

  Scientists are not certain why any of these three species moved south. It may have been because cod, which eat shrimp and crab, were no longer there, but that would not explain the presence of the arctic cod. It may also have been that the water was colder in those years.

  But Rose, who goes to sea to study the northern stock, said, “Fishermen are seeing many strange things that are a sign things are not right.” The cod have been reaching sexual maturity younger and smaller. Undersized four-year-olds are spawning. This is not surprising. When a species is in danger of extinction, it often starts reaching sexual maturity earlier. Nature remains focused on survival. But Rose also said that cod were seen spawning in water temperatures of minus one degree Celsius. Cod are supposed to move to warmer water for spawning. Fishermen keep reporting aberrations, such as fish in an area where they have never been seen before, or at different depths, or a different temperature, or at a different time of year.

  Perhaps even more disturbing, Rose’s studies have concluded that the northern stock has stopped migrating. The stock had normally followed a 500-mile seasonal migration, but Rose believes that after 1992, the survivors came inshore and stayed. He does not know the reason for this but speculates that the bigger, older fish were the leaders and are no longer there to lead. It is also possible that cod migrate because they need food and space for spawning. With the population so reduced, this is no longer necessary.

  Whatever steps are taken, one of the greatest obstacles to restoring cod stocks off of Newfoundland is an almost pathological collective denial of what has happened. Newfoundlanders seem prepared to believe anything other than that they have killed off nature’s bounty. One Canadian journalist published an article pointing out that the cod disappeared from Newfoundland at about the same time that stocks started rebuilding in Norway. Clearly the northern stock had packed up and migrated to Norway.

  Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is the natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is a part of evolution. If cod and
haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

  THE PARIS DEBUT OF FRESH SALT COD

  COD IS SO BEAUTIFUL, THE WAY THE FLESH UNFOLDS IN WHITE LEAVES.

  —Alain Senderens

  A star since he opened his first Paris restaurant when he was only twenty-nine, Alain Senderens is a culinary genius with a knack for marketing and a curious and contemplative intellect. Few people have thought as much about food as Senderens.

  In 1972, as the much-talked-about young chef of his new Paris restaurant, L’Archestrate, one of his many iconoclastic ideas was to serve fresh cod, cabillaud. It had never before been offered in a top-rated Paris restaurant. Like salt cod, most great Paris chefs have their roots in southern regions—Senderens is from the southwest. Salt cod, morue, had slowly made its way up from peasant food in the south to become an honored French tradition. But not fresh cod.

  He created a fresh cod recipe and offered it on the menu as Cabillaud Rôti, Roasted Cod. No one bought it. So he removed the word cabillaud and substituted morue fraiche,“ fresh salt cod. It was a hit. This was the recipe.

  MORUE FRICHE RÔTI (ROASTED FRESH SALT COD)

  4 220-gram pieces of cod with the skin

  Eggplant caviar

  750 grams diced green pepper

  1.5 kilos diced red pepper

  1.5 kilos chopped mushrooms

  500 grams crushed tomatoes

  20 chopped shallots

  10 chopped garlic cloves

  20 chopped anchovy fillets

  10 eggplants roasted for 4 hours at 60 degrees [Celsius;

  140 degrees Fahrenheit]

  3 zucchinis cut into julienne strips

  1. Mix olive oil, shallots, garlic, and anchovies, add red and green pepper and tomato. Cook until the liquid evaporates. Then add the roasted and crushed eggplant and mushrooms. Cook a few minutes and set aside.

  2. Fry the zucchini juliennes.

  3. Pan fry the cod skin down and finish cooking in the oven.

  4. Arrange it on the plate.

  —Alain Senderens, chef, Paris

  13: Bracing for the Spanish Armada

  CONFINED AS THE LIMITS OF FIELD LANE ARE, IT HAS ITS

  BARBER, ITS COFFEE-SHOP, ITS BEER-SHOP, AND ITS

  FRIED-FISH WAREHOUSE.

  —Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1837-1838

  In a Britain that has seen many of its most treasured traditions under siege, an issue debated with increasing frequency is the survival of true fish-and-chips. “We can foresee a time when we won’t get any chunky pieces,” said Maureen Whitehead, who with her husband owns the popular Polsloe Bridge fish-and-chips shop in Exeter, in the green hill country of east Devon. Like all people who know fresh cod, she understood the importance of thickness. “If they don’t let the small grow, that will be it,” she added.

  To most, though not all, of the British working class, fish means cod. In Yorkshire, though, it means haddock, and Harry Ramsden’s, a fish-and-chips chain founded in Guiseley, Leeds, in 1928, built a reputation for more than sixty years with fried haddock. But in the 1990s, when Ramsden’s expanded into the south of England, it was forced to switch to cod. Nothing else is acceptable in the south of England, except in London.

  In Dickens’s description of a thieves’ den in back-street London, he includes the basic components of a working-class commercial district. The London fried fish trade began with the industrial revolution in the 1830s. Jewish merchants in the East End and Soho fried fish and distributed it from warehouses decades before “chipped” potatoes were added. The fish was, and still is, whatever was getting a good price at Billingsgate market—cod, haddock, plaice, hake, or even skate or dogfish. In recent years, dogfish has increasingly turned up in chip shops, but only in London will shop owners admit to’this. In most of England, the disappearance of cod, and large cods at that, is a threat to a way of life.

  Newlyn is a dark, brick, tumble-down-to-the-docks Cornish fishing port, a few miles from Land’s End on the most seaward tip of England. There David Jewell, another fish-and-chip shop owner, said that he cannot always offer the real fish. Fish-and-chips, the common man’s dish, must sell for a reasonably low price, and the high price of cod sometimes forces him to settle for pollock or whiting. Also, this most British of foods is often not British anymore. Fishy Moore’s, one of the oldest chip shops in England, founded in Coventry in 1891, has given up on English cod. Coventry, in the Midlands, is as far inland as any place in England can be. Yet, for eighty years, the Moore family would go by train every morning to Skegness, on the other side of England, and buy freshly landed North Sea cod. In 1968, the family sold the shop. The current owner, Shaun Britton, who learned the business from his father, said, “It is almost impossible to get good British cod. What we see on docks has been on a boat for three days.” Fishy Moore’s buys frozen cod from Iceland, Norway, or occasionally the Faroe Islands.

  If there is anything as basic and universal to the British working class as fried fish, it is xenophobia. So the proposition that foreigners may be depriving British workers of their cod is politically potent. To the British fishermen, and to many British people, that is exactly what the European Community, which is now the European Union, has done. This argument, of course, denies the long British history of overfishing and the fact that the dread Spanish supertrawlers, which are now so universally denounced, were a British invention. And the rights of fishermen to have free access to the sea, a principle the British fought for with such high-minded rhetoric in Icelandic waters, was somehow forgotten each time Brussels suggested a European partner should have rights in British waters.

  According to the British government, 70 percent of the species in British waters are being overfished. In the North Sea, the catch dropped from 287,000 metric tons in 1981 to 86,000 in 1991. Like Canada’s northern stock, British cod are now reaching maturity at a much younger age than the normal three to five years, and large cod are increasingly rare.

  In the 1990s, with North Sea fisheries in crisis, the action shifted to the Irish box. Soon the International Council for Exploration of the Seas (ICES), which for years had been warning about the dwindling stocks in the North Sea, began reporting a similar situation in the Irish Sea.

  Within the European Union, fishing issues are settled by a much disliked bureaucracy of the Common Fishing Policy. In each country, each boat has a set quota on each species in each area of ocean each month. It is widely agreed that this system has failed to stop the decline of cod and other commercially valuable species. Politics and nationalism often play far greater roles than conservation in the decision-making process. For many years, scientists and European ministers agreed that hake was so menaced that the quotas had to be reduced by 40 percent. But at each annual meeting of European fishing ministers, the Spanish, for whom hake is a basic food, lobby to maintain the catch, and the reduction is never agreed on.

  In a December 1994 meeting for European ministers, the Common Fishing Policy agreed to let forty Spanish fishing boats work the Irish box. After. forty years of overfishing by their own trawlers, the fishermen of Cornwall and Devon had someone else to blame for their dwindling cod stocks. Even before the forty boats arrived, the word Spanish seemed to sit unkindly on everyone’s lips in southwestern England. Maureen Whitehead at her Exeter fish-and-chips shop now knew whom to blame if her fish pieces seemed a bit thin. “There’ll be no more chunky pieces if the Spanish take everything,” she warned.

  Far out in balmy, green Cornwall, with its lush vegetation warmed by the Gulf Stream, there was a growing obsession about the Spanish. European relationships are often mired in history, and the Spanish have never had a good name here. The Cornish recall without forgiveness that long before the two brutal World Wars against the Germans, and centuries of battles again
st the French, the narrow sloping streets of Newlyn had been sacked by marauding Spaniards who arrived in galleons. And now they were coming back.

  The Spanish, with the largest fleet and little to offer in fishing grounds, are a favorite target in Atlantic fishing. It is seldom mentioned that they also have the largest market because of an unusually high per capita consumption. For centuries, Atlantic fishermen from the New England pilgrims to the newly independent Icelanders have been sustained by Spanish markets.

  Few cod are landed anymore by the Spanish or even the Basque fishermen who began it all. The giant bacalao companies—which owned their own trawler fleets, landed salt cod from the banks, and dried and sold it—have all closed. Trueba y Pardo used to be a major company in Bilbao. In San Sebastián’s port of Pasajes, there was PYSBE—Pesquerías y Secadores de Bacalao de Espana (Salt Cod Fishermen and Driers of Spain), founded in 1926. Both closed in the 1960s. In addition to fishermen and dockworkers, PYSBE had employed 500 workers in cleaning and drying alone. Trueba y Pardo had about 200 cleaners. These workers were almost all women, earning very low wages and no benefits, spending their days simply removing the dark gray membrane that had been the organ cavity lining. It was thought to be unattractive, and these workers cost the companies very little. Each woman could process 1,000 kilos (2,200 pounds) of fish in a day. Then the cod would be air-dried in the mountains. With modern salaries and benefits, companies could not afford such huge payrolls.

  When the 200-mile limit was imposed, the Basques lost access to most cod grounds. By the time Spain entered the European Community in the 1980s, European waters had little cod. By 1990, only a few very old trawlers were rigged for cod fishing from Basque ports.