Who Killed the Grand Banks: The Untold Story Behind the Decimation of One of the World's Greatest Natural Resources

206 Pages·2008·0.73 MB·English

by  Alex Rose

Who Killed
the Grand Banks?
Who Killed
the Grand Banks?
The Untold Story Behind the
Decimation of One of the World’s
Greatest Natural Resources
Alex Rose
Copyright © 2008 by Alex Rose
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rose, Alex
Who killed the Grand Banks? : the untold story behind the decimation
of one of the world’s greatest natural resources / Alex Rose.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-15387-1
1. Atlantic cod fi sheries–Closures–Atlantic Coast (Canada). 2. Grand
Banks of Newfoundland. 3. Fishery management–Canada. 4. Fishery
policy–Canada. 5. Natural resources–Government policy–Canada.
6. Natural resources–Canada. I. Title.
SH229.R58 2008 333.95'66330916344 C2008-901479-0
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To Joanne, Caroline, and Alexandra
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Chapter 1: A Great English Ship Moored Near
the Grand Banks 1
Chapter 2: Th e Cod: A Short History 15
Chapter 3: Botched Science and a Rebel
Named Ransom 25
Chapter 4: Foreign Devils 45
Chapter 5: Draggers and Cod Death 53
Chapter 6: Federal Fisheries: A Sad and Ignoble
Sputter into Inconsequentiality 71
Chapter 7: Death in the Outports:
A Town Called Fortune 87
Chapter 8: Requiem for the Beothuk 97
Chapter 9: Pacifi c Salmon: Going the Way of the
Grand Banks Cod? 107
Chapter 10: Off shore Oil Is the New Cod 129
Chapter 11: Peter Pearse, Rational Man, and the
Prophet Daniel 147
Chapter 12: A Tale of Two Newfoundlands 169
Appendix: Th e Two-Hundred-Mile Fishing Limit 181
End Notes 185
Index 187
Acknowledgements
When it comes to the near extinction of the Grand Banks cod—
for 500 years one of the world’s known natural wonders—people
in Newfoundland and governments in St. John’s and Ottawa set up an
impenetrable defence. Perhaps shamed and embarrassed by their complicity
in a biological disaster to rival anything in recent history, many have
taken refuge in denial, obfuscation and a self-righteousness that always
blames the other; the naturally garrulous people of Newfoundland have
been reduced to a stony silence. This made research maddening, circular,
Sisyphean. But others, undaunted by academic careerism, pensions, pay
cheques or party lines, worked overtime to help me uncover the facts.
Two seminal books—Fishing for Truth by Alan Christopher Finlayson and
Useless Arithmetic by Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis—helped
frame my initial research. From the Illustrated History of Canada, I am
especially indebted to historians Arthur Ray and Graeme Wynn. Later,
Daniel Pauly and Rashid Sumalia of the Fisheries Centre at the University
of British Columbia patiently shared new research with me as did their
colleagues Carl Walters and Sylvie Guénette. Through a different lens,
resource economist Peter Pearse argued that quotas will, in the future, help
to prevent other fi sheries from “going the way of the Grand Banks cod.”
Two people helped me understand the link between the Grand Banks
cod slaughter and issues such as East Coast offshore oil and gas activity
(Moira Baird, Newfoundland) and fast-declining Pacifi c salmon stocks (Scott
Simpson, Vancouver Sun, British Columbia). Stewart Bell, Helena Bryan,
Johanne Fischer, Peter Hill, Bonnie Irving, Bob Laughlin, Glen Power, David
Stouck, and Phil Wallace provided advice and encouragement throughout
and I would not have been able to fi nish this book without the generosity
and patience of Kim Mah. I have benefi tted from them all and it is a pleasure
to list them here, while exonerating them from the errors and omissions that,
like submerged fi shnets, may survive as the book goes into production.
1
A Great English Ship Moored
Near the Grand Banks
“The cod were so thick we hardly have been able to row a boat through them.”
— John Cabot
Head northeast in Newfoundland along the Bonavista Peninsula,
until the rough road ends and the cold ocean begins, and you’ll
fi nd a bronze statue of a man clothed in puffy Renaissance garb
overlooking tumultuous seas. The landscape has a distinctly untamed
feel to it as icebergs fl oat offshore like errant mountaintops, humpback
whales feed and breach, and puffi ns dart along the ocean surface to and
from their island colony just around the point.
That improbably dapper man is John Cabot who, in 1497, reached
the New World—the New Founde Land, as it was dubbed. Like
Columbus fi ve years before him, Cabot was an Italian sailor seeking a
shortcut to the Orient. He fi gured that by heading north to where the
longitudinal lines were closer, he’d shave off some sailing days on his
WHO KILLED THE GRAND BANKS?
westward voyage to Asia. He fi gured wrong, of course. Cabot and his
crew of eighteen ran into the invincible coast of eastern Canada and,
instead of spices and porcelain, they found spruce, the oldest granite
on Earth, and ice fl oes. Undaunted, Cabot claimed the region for
the English throne, which had fi nanced his expedition, then headed
home.
So enduring are the tales of Cabot’s arrival hereabouts—the
peninsula’s name is derived from the fi rst words he was said to have
uttered—that it seems unfair to mention that Cabot’s landing spot
is wholly a matter of conjecture. Historians say Cabot may very well
have made landfall around the Bonavista Peninsula, or perhaps in Nova
Scotia on Cape Breton Island, where a similar statue also marks the
event. Then again, maybe Cabot landed in Labrador (now part of the
Province of Newfoundland and Labrador), or much farther south in
Maine. No one knows for sure.
While Cabot’s landfall may be in dispute, what he discovered is not:
cod—and lots of them.
Every school child knows the story. Five hundred years ago the
explorer John Cabot returned from the waters around present-day
Newfoundland to report that the codfi sh ran so thick they were easily
caught by dangling a wicker basket over the side of the vessel. The log of
Cabot’s ship, the Matthew, reported there were six- and seven-foot-long
codfi sh weighing as much as 200 pounds. Cabot discovered a resource
that would shape world politics for hundreds of years, launch a fi ercely
competitive Maritime trade, and create safe harbours along the shores
of the new colony of Newfoundland: the limitless bounty of the Grand
Banks cod.
Cabot led two explorations from Bristol, in 1497 and 1498. King
Henry VII, who had agreed to his voyage and helped to pay for it,
rewarded Cabot with the sum of £10. On his return to England,
Cabot related amazing tales of this new world. Like witnesses in the
New Testament, Cabot told tales of men who could walk across the
Grand Banks waters on the backs of cod. Fictional, perhaps, and more
likely sales patter for his clients, this fi shy narrative was spun into a
tale of mythic proportion, painting a false reality of this foreboding,
rock-ribbed place moored in the North Atlantic.
2
A Great English Ship Moored Near the Grand Banks
Historic accounts say that Cabot lowered a basket weighted with
stones into the North Atlantic, then hauled it back up brimming with
cod. The discovery of these fertile fi shing grounds set off a centuries-long
struggle among Basque, Portuguese, French and English fi shermen, and
established a pattern of far-fl ung coastal settlements, called outports by
Newfoundlanders, that ring the island.
And so the legend fi ts today: the Grand Banks became Valhalla, a
miraculous, self-sustaining Eighth Wonder of the world, feeding the
known world for 500 years.
The catastrophic collapse of the fi sheries, circa 1992, was un-
precedented. An ecological disaster to rival any other—the destruction
of the Amazonian rain forest notwithstanding—in modern history.
This made-in-Canada plunder was part human greed, part stupidity,
and part rapacity. Tarnishing Canada’s standing within the international
community, it holds the reputation of Canada’s once-vaunted
fi sheries scientists up to ridicule. Sixteen years later, no one has taken
accountability or apologized for the ruination of a centuries-old way of
life and, more shocking, a stock recovery plan has yet to be produced.
The plunder was born of a mindset that has much to do with
survival. And that mindset still has currency today in a saying often
heard in the coffee shops and bars of this rock-ribbed island: “If it
runs, walks, or swims, kill it.” The Grand Banks cod was the raison
d’être for the economic lifeblood and culture of Newfoundland. Little
wonder that governments in St. John’s and Ottawa were ever-devising
and fi ne-tuning policies that worked overtime to build an economy
from this one resource. Today, many Newfoundlanders, resorting to
the blame game, no longer want to talk about the destruction of the
ecosystem. A naturally talkative community has been reduced to a
stony silence.
Visitors wonder if Newfoundlanders share a sense of collective
shame as they resort to pat and automatic answers about what happened
to the cod. Fingers are pointed at foreign fi shing, seals, changes to water
temperature, botched science, bad management by federal fi sheries,
and, as always, the politicians in Ottawa. Today, the bereft citizens just
want to move on, determined to allocate the Grand Banks cod collapse
to memory.
3