In Canada, cod remain scarce despite ban

Source: Boston Globe

In Canada, cod remain scarce despite ban

By David Abel
Globe Staff / March 4, 2012

PETTY HARBOUR, Newfoundland - For more than 500 years, the black waters off this craggy coast of rust-colored hills and ice-bound coves teemed with a seemingly endless supply of cod, so much that it sparked wars, drew immigrants from far away, and gave rise to a thriving fishing industry and a way of life passed across generations.

But after years of overfishing, changing sea temperatures, and mismanagement, the olive-backed, spotted fish known as the northern cod virtually vanished. In the summer of 1992, as boat after boat returned to this windswept land with empty nets, Canadian officials did something once unthinkable: They banned fishing cod.

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For cod fishermen in New England, who have resisted government-ordered cuts to their catch, it is a sobering spectacle, a lesson hard to understand, much less accept.

As the number of cod counted in the waters between Provincetown, Mass., and Port Clyde, Maine, has plummeted, scientists and policy makers fear that what happened in the frigid waters 1,500 miles northeast of Massachusetts may be occurring in the Gulf of Maine, potentially dealing a dire blow to a multimillion-dollar industry that helped fuel the birth of the United States and continues to support hundreds of fishermen.

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Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/03/04/in_canada_cod_remain_scarce_despite_ban/