Home

Do you have concerns about the state of Canada’s fisheries, particularly Northern cod and other fish stocks off Canada’s Atlantic coast?

On this site we offer an innovative original analysis of our current fishery problems, with intriguing insights into their causes and their economic and ecological consequences. We challenge the fishery sector and the government to change course and adopt a very different fisheries management approach – one that will lead to a fishery that is sustainable in economic, ecological and social terms.

Too good to be true? Before you decide, check out The Basics for what we’re proposing and why, and go to the Contact Page to pursue the discussion.

         

Why this website?

          This website, with our proposal at its core, is intended to stimulate a broad-based, in-depth discussion of policy and practice – a discussion that is urgently needed if we are to build a truly prosperous and sustainable fishery.  

         Surely the purpose of harvesting our ocean resources is to achieve maximum economic and social benefits now and in the future for all involved, while ensuring the sustainability of the ocean’s ecosystem and all the stocks. This can only be done if we manage our fisheries with the goal of maximizing the net economic return to harvesters and their coastal communities, always in the context of ecosystem sustainability. This in turn will benefit the economy and society of Canada as a whole, and enable a viable fishery sector to take us into the future.  

But in recent decades, the fishery on Canada’s Atlantic coast has certainly not reflected an understanding of those goals. Our fishery has declined from one of the most productive in the world to its current economically fragile and environmentally precarious state. The rich dowry of cod that Newfoundland and Labrador brought into Confederation in 1949 had been reduced to commercial extinction by the time of the 1992 moratorium. All these years later, the cod are still being threatened by the same kind of industrial fishing that led to the collapse, and other species are being “fished down.” Meanwhile, harvesters, workers, coastal communities and the economy as a whole continue to suffer the effects. Something’s wrong here!

       This ongoing disaster has unfolded under the direction of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. DFO has attempted to manage the entire fishery by calculating Total Allowable Catches and enforcing quotas to maintain stocks. But they’ve failed, because whatever the size of the quotas, and no matter how they are allocated, the fundamental problem remains, because managing a fishery by quotas doesn’t work. It hasn’t, and it can’t, principally because it depends on scientifically flawed assumptions about the measurability and predictability of fish stocks in marine ecosystems. Climate change and the increasing damaging infringements on the ocean’s integrity exacerbate the inherent statistical uncertainties involved in quota-based management.     

        However, there is another way to approach fishery management – one which can work, and does. Our lobster fishery is profitable and sustainable, yet there are no quotas: management is based on inputs, controlling effort rather than catches. Applying an input-based management model to cod and other species would eliminate a multitude of problems, both economic and ecological, enabling fish stocks to recover and revitalizing the harvesting sector and the coastal communities it supports.

        We are proposing a paradigm shift to input-based management, informed by ecosystem science, local traditional knowledge and Indigenous harvesting principles.

        As we move forward through the 2020s, let’s replace the current management system and its constant crises with this new and better approach, so that we can once again point with pride to the success and sustainability of our fishery sector.