<img src=“http://www.fishermanstale.com/ft-images/museum7.jpg” style=“float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px” width=200 alt=“Atlantic cod”/>Within 20 years a population of Atlantic cod will essentially go extinct. Our best attempts to save the population of cod near Newfoundland have failed.
The Atlantic cod was a popular fish for commercial fishing in the late 20th century until the fishery collapsed in the 1990s. Total bans were put in place and everyone waited, expecting to see a recovery.
However, after 15 years of little to no fishing, local populations haven’t recovered. In fact, some populations continue to decline, according to projections reported in this month’s issue of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
“This is the most shocking and disturbing news I’ve ever heard about a marine fish population,” says fisheries biologist Jeffrey Hutchings of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.
The study utilized well-established models of fishery stocks to predict the future of the fourth largest population of cod in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, southwest of Newfoundland. The results: The southern Gulf cod stock will be extirpated (local extinction defined as less than 0.3% of the species’ original biomass) within 20 years if limited fishing is allowed, and closing the fishery only buys it 18 years.
The main problem, is that adult cod have been dying at an unusually high rate in recent years. No one knows why, but some suspect increased predation by seals. What’s worse is that other cod populations which were crippled in the 1990s are also at risk. While they appear stable, as one of the study’s authors noted, so did the southern Gulf population until a few years ago.
Biologists and fisheries managers generally believe that stocks will rebound if fishing is stopped, but studies like this one show that to be a fallacy.
I can only wonder what will happen to other species on the verge of collapse, like the Atlantic tuna, which caused an outcry this week when the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna placed fishery allowances well over what is considered sustainable by their own scientists.
If our best method of conservation is fallible, how can we honestly expect to preserve populations we push to the brink of extinction?
