Cod — Atlantic

"Two decades ago, cod numbers were such that the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea recommended fishing up to 32,000 tonnes in the Faroe Shelf. This year, populations are so small the council has advised no fishing for two years . . . Faroese cod is not the only species of the fish that is suffering: all over the world, numbers are reaching critical lows. There are approximately 20 distinct cod populations in the north Atlantic, yet only two are plentiful: one in the Barents Sea and the other Icelandic . . . Historically, overfishing was the main reason cod numbers plummeted. But now, scientists warn that warming waters are having dire effects on their ability to reproduce. Indeed, some worry that the climate emergency will make it impossible for certain cod populations to fully recover."

“We went out with our research vessel into the Barents Sea, and caught Atlantic cod and polar cod, and brought them back alive into a research facility in Northern Norway. And in this facility, we raised the eggs and larvae under different temperature and ocean acidification, mimicking the conditions expected for the next decades to come. . . The results were pretty clear. We found that with ocean acidification, the eggs become more sensitive to temperature extremes. So this means that their thermal tolerance range narrows. And that we found for both species. And we also found that they use more energy to regulate against the stress of temperature and ocean acidification. And when we used these data and combined them with the climate projections, we find that with the worst-case scenario there will be a decrease in egg survival chances of about 50 percent in many of the important spawning areas of those species. . . On the positive side, we find that in the scenario where we successfully limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, both species would be able to successfully reproduce in those areas where they spawn currently.”

“In the western Atlantic, the range of the cod stretches from the waters of Cape Hatteras, N.C., northward to both coasts of Greenland and the Labrador Sea off Canada’s east coast . . . While overfishing is seen as the primary culprit in most accounts, there is also recognition that depleted stocks are vulnerable to shocks like changes from climate variations . . . [George] Rose concurred that the warming temperatures in the last decade have helped fish off the northeastern coast of Canada while hindering the revival of fisheries in New England. The trajectory of both fish stocks is an indicator that the fish are adapting to changes in ocean temperatures, [Andrew] Pershing noted. However, the effect of climatic change on marine populations, including cod populations off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, is complex, Rose said. ‘It may not be a direct relationship; the increase in temperature has effects on the plankton, on the capelin, which are the food,’ he said, and also affects the growth of the cod.”

“The Gulf of Maine cod stocks today are probably only a fraction of 1 percent of what they were during George Washington’s presidency. If there is any lesson in this story of large-scale, long-term environmental degradation, it is not that fishermen were (or are) to blame, or that scientists were (or are) to blame, or that politicians were (or are) to blame. The system was (and is) to blame.”

“The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in Copenhagen, Denmark, has recommended the first major catch increase for North Sea cod since 2000, as it says the stock has climbed back above danger levels. And figures to be released later this year by Canada’s fisheries ministry show cod stocks on the Grand Banks, off Newfoundland, are up for the third year in a row – although they aren’t out of danger yet. There’s no mystery to it, say fisheries experts on both sides of the Atlantic: fishers stopped killing so many cod, and the population recovered, although it took its time. The recovery seems to settle fears that the ecology of the fishing grounds was so severely altered by overfishing, especially in Canada, that these cod stocks would never recover. However, it isn’t yet clear whether either fishery will regain its former size.”

“Dr. Tom Pickerell, technical director at Seafish, said the biggest surprise unveiled by the research was how close North Sea cod is to being healthy enough to be considered for certification as sustainable by the MSC. ‘The biggest surprise was North Sea cod,’ said Dr. Pickerell. ‘It is one of those that could potentially be a few years from entering MSC certification. It’s on a trajectory that if it continues then it can come into a level that’s long-term sustainable . . . I would like to think within a decade we will have MSC-certified North Sea cod.”

“But long-term, they both want the same thing, and that’s a healthy and productive fishery, and that includes both the fish and the communities that depend on them. To help make that happen, scientists and fishermen are working together to protect spawning cod in the Gulf of Maine. . . male cod make noise when they’re spawning. The sound has been described as a grunt, and the fish make it by contracting their swim bladders. Scientists aren’t sure if the noise is meant to attract females or intimidate competing males, but whatever the reason, scientists hope that they can find spawning aggregations by listening for them. To that end, they’ve deployed microphones on the seafloor and have sent autonomous underwater vehicles to search for spawning cod. . . “I believe that we need to work together more closely not less closely,” said Mirarchi of scientists and fishermen. “Maybe we can find the way through this so we can have fish and we can have some stability so people can build their lives around a fishery again and we can go back to having another 300 years of Scituate as a fishing port.” "

“The Gulf of Maine cod stock, a historic icon of the New England fishery, is in the worst shape we have seen in the 40 years that we have been monitoring it. Abundance is only 3-4 percent of levels deemed sustainable for the stock.”

“Federal scientists say the move [ban on cod fishery] is necessary to prevent a further decline in the codfish population, which is 97 percent below what they consider a sustainable level. And the ban should help protect areas where the fish spawn”

“A fleet that in the 1880s consisted mostly of sail-powered boats open to the elements was far more successful at wrestling fish from the sea than we are now. For every hour spent fishing today, in boats bristling with the latest fish-finding electronics, fishers land just 6 percent of what they did 120 years ago. Put another way, fishers today have to work seventeen times harder to get the same catch as people did in the nineteenth century. The simple reason for this stark contrast between past and present is that there are fewer fish in the sea.”

“The fishing industry has been dependent on a constant input of new capital. Whenever fish began to run out, fishers moved on or switched to other species. Overtime fisheries have eaten up their capital stocks rather than lived within the limits of annual production. But fisheries are now failing because, like a ponzie scheme, they are running out of new capital. We now hunt fish to the farther limits of the oceans, and to depths where productivity slows to a trickle. There is nowhere else to go and few species worth eating remain untouched by fishing. The solution is not for a handful of people to stop eating fish. We need to set up new regulations and police them well.”

“Between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden there is a short and narrow strait called the Öresund . . . Because of its importance to shipping, Öresund has been closed to mobile fishing gears like trawls and seine nets since 1932. Catches in the Öresund are made mainly by fixed nets. To the north, a region ten times its size, called the Kattegat, is fished by bottom trails. The fortunes of their respective fisheries in the last thirty-five years could not be more different. In the late 1970s, fishers trawled sixteen thousand to twenty-two thousand tons of cod from the Kattegat while gillnetters in Öresund took about two thousand. In 2008, the Kattegat yielded 495 tons of cod, compared to 2,350 tons from the Öresund. Research catches made in Öresund that year showed cod there to be fifteen to forty times more abundant than in Kattegat, and much bigger too. Some of the cod pulled from these waters today rival the behemoths of old . . . The Öresund and its fisheries have remained in great shape because they are protected from the most destructive kinds of fishing.”

“It was the wild west when I started [as a fisherman]. You could fish where you wanted, when you wanted. Today, we have some fish stocks that haven’t had a good year class (the number of fish born in a single year) in 20 years. The water is definitely warmer than I ever remember it. We’re seeing fish from the Mid-Atlantic moving up and our fish moving toward Canada.”

“A vast network of unique and ecologically sensitive areas in the wider Atlantic has been protected in a bold move for the protection of high seas biodiversity by the OSPAR Commission at its third ministerial meeting in Norway this week, bringing the network of OSPAR’s marine protected areas to cover an area of 433,000 km² . . . OSPAR Ministers have established six marine protected areas covering a total area of 285,000 km² protecting a series of seamounts and sections of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and hosting a range of vulnerable deep-sea habitats and species.”