The federal government has ended the cod moratorium in Newfoundland and Labrador, which gutted the province’s economy and transformed its small communities more than 30 years ago.
The Fisheries Ministry announced Wednesday that it would restore commercial cod fishing in the province, with a total allowable catch of 18,000 tonnes for the 2024 season.
“The end of the northern cod moratorium is a historic milestone for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians,” said federal Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier in a press release. “It is through our collaboration that we have reached this moment. We will rebuild this fishery cautiously but optimistically, with the main beneficiaries being the coastal and indigenous communities of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Ottawa announced a devastating cod moratorium on July 2, 1992. Cod stocks off the province’s north and east coasts were collapsing and the moratorium was put in place to help them recover. Previously, cod fishing was one of the province’s main economic drivers, and the moratorium put tens of thousands of people out of work.
John Crosbie, who was then federal fisheries minister, said: “I didn’t get the fish out of the damn water!” » to a group of fishermen unhappy with the decline in fish stocks. He announced the moratorium a day later.
With fish processing plants closing and jobs disappearing, young people from rural Newfoundland and Labrador began moving to St. John’s or mainland Canada to find work. Between 1991 and 2001, the province’s population fell by about 10 per cent, largely due to people leaving isolated communities, according to the Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador website.
The cod moratorium was supposed to last two years. But once this deadline passed, fish stocks showed no signs of recovery.
Last year, Department of Fisheries scientists announced they had used new modeling showing the cod stock was outside the “critical zone” for the first time in decades. They stressed, however, that the change in designation was due to the use of different models, not because there were necessarily more fish in the water.
When a species is in the critical zone, scientists recommend leaving it alone as much as possible and keeping catch limits low.
The stock is now in the “cautious zone,” meaning fishing decisions must always prioritize regrowth. The total catch of 18,000 tonnes for the 2024 season is a fraction of what it was – 120,000 tonnes, according to a government website – in February 1992, just months before the moratorium.
George Rose, a marine scientist who has studied Newfoundland cod for decades, said he remains skeptical of the species’ new designation.
“This is not a change in the title, which has not increased significantly since 2015-2016, but simply a change in the criteria by which the title is judged,” Rose wrote in an email on Wednesday.
The new modeling “rewrites decades of research and analysis on the stock and its potential productivity, and is based on analyzes that are unclear and, at best, questionable,” he added.
By lifting the moratorium, Rose said, the Department of Fisheries is “rolling the dice on this important fishery.”
The press release issued Wednesday by the federal Department of Fisheries indicates that approximately 84 percent of this year’s total allowable catch will be allocated to inshore fishermen, while 6 percent will go to Canadian offshore fishermen.
“Our province has been waiting a long time for the northern cod moratorium to end,” Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey said in a social media post. “A sustainable harvest that provides maximum benefit to all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians is most important.”
