SallyRand

HE PERMISSIVE APPROACH TO FISHERIES DEVELOPMENT

Throughout the 1980s, the annual catch of Canada's northern cod fishing fleet hovered around the 250,000 tonnes mark, as the Canadian government kept promoting more investment. Newfoundland's small-scale, inshore cod fishermen, however, were voicing concerns long before anyone else that the abundance of the northern cod population was not as healthy as scientists were reporting. Contradictory to scientific data, traditional inshore fishermen in Newfoundland began to notice declining catches before the mid-1980s. By 1986 the scientists also realized that the stock was declining, and by 1988 had recommended the total allowable catch be cut in half. Instead of acting immediately, in a precautionary manner to protect dwindling fish stocks by substantially reducing catch quotas at the first signs of overfishing, the federal government delayed conservation action, choosing instead quite moderate reductions of the total allowable catch beginning in 1989. It wasn't until 1990, following several years of analysis and re-analysis of data from stock surveys (without simultaneously reducing catch quotas) that the

Independent Review of the state of the Northern Cod stock concluded that the population, the biomass, the spawning population, and the spawning biomass of the Northern Cod were all in decline and that fishing-related mortality was at dangerously high levels.

By 1992, the biomass estimate for northern cod was the lowest ever measured. The Canadian Minister of Fisheries and Oceans had no choice but to declare a ban on fishing northern cod. For the first time in 400 years the fishing of northern cod ceased in Newfoundland. The fisheries department issued a warning in 1995 that the entire northern cod population had declined to just 1,700 tonnes by the end of 1994, down from a 1990 biomass survey showing 400,000 tonnes, and showed no sign of recovery - just 1700 tonnes remained in a fishery that had for over a century yielded a quarter-million ton catches, year after year. The fisheries department also predicted that, even in the unlikely event that the fish stock started an immediate recovery, it would take at least 15 years before it would be healthy enough to withstand significant fishing.

Following on the heels of the '92 ban on northern cod fishing, fisheries for cod in other areas and for most other species of groundfish around eastern Canada also had to be either severely curtailed or closed altogether because of serious depletion. An estimated 30 thousand people that had already lost their jobs after the 1992 Northern Cod moratorium took effect, were joined by an additional 12,000 fishermen and plant workers following these additional cutbacks and closures. With more than forty thousand people out of jobs, Newfoundland became an economic disaster area, as processing plants shut down, and vessels from the smallest dory to the monster draggers were made idle or sold overseas at bargain prices. Several hundred Newfoundland communities were devastated.

In response the federal government put up nearly a billion dollars as a stopgap measure to assist with social welfare payments and retraining of dispossed fishing people in 1993 and 1994. But that would only be the beginning of the taxpayer funded payout to cover the calamity, with forecasts that the social welfare bill would hit at least another billion dollars, and possibly even more.
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED:

Government and industry must share the blame for allowing the seemingly limitless stocks of cod to dwindle to near-extinction. They were too busy, following the takeover of the 200 mile zone, with making plans, setting expansive goals, and then allocating fish, and lots of it, instead of making sound, conservative business plans to match fishing effort with the limited availability of the resource. Blame also lies with the federal government for its overly optimistic reliance on science in predicting a large increase in Canada's cod catch in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of giving the severely stressed cod and other groundfish populations a respite from fishing pressure, Ottawa began freely issuing liscenses, and subsidies were provided big companies to build bigger ships and processing plants. Industry employment rose 60 percent in two decades.

It is at such points that the dynamic known as "the ratchet effect" sets in, as it classically does in virtually all fisheries in modern times. The "ratchet effect" takes hold in the initial stages of exploitation of a new fishery, expansion of an existing fishery, or deployment of a new technology or fishing method. During this stage, harvesting rates increase rapidly and stabilize at excessive, unsustainable levels. Government, which is supposed to regulate the fishery, is motivated instead to remove obstacles so that profits from the fishery can grow. Often, governments offer attractive subsidies, with ready takers drawn by high yields and substantial profits during this initially stable period. Investment in vessels and/or processing grows rapidly.

Conditions soon change, however, and yields start to decline. Then, when the results of additional scientific research and improved knowledge necessitate calls for reductions in the allowable catch, industry appeals to government for help or special consideration, because, by this point, substantial investments and jobs are at risk. The typical response by government at this point is to delay a decision, pending the results of more research. Government procrastinates, arguing that no substantive data is available upon which to base a decision to reduce fishing effort, and without conclusive information the status quo is maintained. The scientific process required to acquire, analyse and respond to such information can take several years. Government often agrees to commit even more subsidies to bolster troubled investors, which only masks the real problem -- the need for (often dramatic) cutbacks. But, the overall effect of government subsidies is to encourage over-harvesting. The ratchet effect thrives on government's failure to regulate the tendency for fisheries investments to expand during good periods, but applies strong pressure not to dis-invest at the first evidence of poor periods.

The Canadian Atlantic fisheries collapse illustrates how government support for the expansionist motivations of private investors in fisheries often results in society at large being long term losers. The profits from capital intensive, hi-tech, industrial scale fisheries are privatised by investors during the boom years, while the costs of such irrational economic behaviour are socialised for years after the crash. In Canada's, case a two- billion dollar recovery bill may only be a part of the total long term costs. The human costs to individuals and desperate communities now deprived of meaningful and sustainable employment is staggering. The trauma suffered by some 40,000 workers and their families in Newfoundland cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

The Canadian calamity also demonstrates that we now have the technological capability to find and annihilate every commercial fish stock, in any ocean and sea, and do irreparable damage to entire ecosystems in the process. Newfoundland and the Northern Cod fishery might still be thriving today if Canada had taken a precautionary approach to the development of its Atlantic fisheries back in the late '70s, instead of the permissive approach which doomed the fishery to collapse.
ENDNOTES

1 Raoul Anderson. "Usufrucht and Contradiction: Territorial Custom and Abuse in Newfoundland's Banks Schooner and Droy Fishery" in Maritime Anthropolocial Studies, MAST 1988, Vol. 1, No2: 81-102.

2 William K. Warner. Distant Water - The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman. Penguin Books, 1984. p .viii.

3 Report on the Status of Groundfish Stocks in the Canadian Northwest Atlantic. Atlantic Stock Assessment Secretariat, Department of Fisheries and Oceans. June 1994. p.19.

4 Ibid. p.20.

5 Reproductive Success in Atlantic Cod (Gadus Morhua): The potential Impact of Trawling. A report prepared by: OCEANS Ltd., Newfoundland for the Newfoundland Inshore Fisheries Association. Feb. 1990. pp79-89.

6 Ibid. p. 88."