Transcript Atlantic Cod and Bacalao
Atlantic Cod and Bacalao
400+ yrs of salt-cod production for distant markets Seasonal inshore fishing; ‘cod’ = ‘fish’ but dependent on diversified activities (salmon, seals, timber) By early 19 th century, small-boat family ‘companies’ trading with merchants through ‘truck’ system
a quintal of fish (112 pounds) was worth the same as a barrel of flour no matter how many fish were caught.
Poverty and scarcity of material resources for coping & adaptation Social Capital
Fisheries and the Culture of Outport Newfoundland
• Fishery-dependent coastal communities • Isolation and few alternatives • Long histories, strong personal and community identification with fishing • Fishing at the center of culture • “The Commons” at land and at sea: major source of resilience – Open & equitable access – Local & limited control
Inshore fishing architecture and technology
Joe Batt’s Arm & Tilting, Fogo Island, 8/03
Event Ecology/History
• “Failures” of inshore fishery late 60s • Out-migration, “the dole,” resettlement, cooperative • Intensification of fishing; – expansion into near-shore multi-species fisheries: “longliners” – Gill-nets; small mesh cod traps • Decline of subsistence activities • “ecological trap”
Events continue
• 200 mile exclusive economic zone 1977 • Optimism and expansion; projected high level of MSY; high TACs • Science-based management • Declining inshore catches; – Intensification but also concern about science – NIFA and other challenges to DFO
• Shift to snow crab (“supplementary” licensing of longliner fleets) • Small boat inshore fisheries scrambling---lumpfish, lobster, blackback flounder, capelin, squid; • Expanding capacity and mobility of small boat fleet: small longliners, for cod traps and nearshore gill netting, crab pots.
• Small longliners became large longliners as nearshore waters fished out….
• RESTRUCTURING, social, economic, political (and ecological?)