30 years after the moratorium, what have we really learned about cod and science?
The cod collapse presented an opportunity to learn — but have those lessons stuck
The following is an essay by Jenn Thornhill Verma, author of the book Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland's Saltwater Cowboys. Now based in Ottawa, Verma examines the state of science on cod 30 years after the moratorium.
"Although the industry has many problems, a shortage of fish is not one of them," confidently pronounced the 1982 report of the Task Force on Atlantic Fisheries, which is commonly called the Kirby report.
But a shortage of fish, as we now know, would become an insurmountable problem a decade later —so much so that on July 2, 1992, the federal government shuttered the commercial northern cod fishery, once Canada's largest fishery.
But in the early 1980s, it was the threat of a financial collapse, rather than a cod collapse, that preoccupied Ottawa. As the Kirby report noted, "in late 1981, it became clear that once again the industry would probably require a substantial infusion of public funds — as it had in 1968 and again in 1974-76 — if it was to avoid almost total collapse."
The federal government wanted to break this cycle of bailouts — all the while banking on a plentiful supply of cod. By 1987, as the report details, the groundfish harvest was expected to reach 1.1 million tonnes — an increase of about 370,000 tonnes over 1981.
Almost half of that increase was confined to one species: cod.
As well, about 70 per cent of the growth in the harvest was anticipated to take place off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
"Hopes were pinned almost entirely on Northern cod to save the fishery. The biological reality was not there, and the assumption of great growth was uncontested," said fisheries scientist George Rose, reflecting on the Kirby report today.
While many inshore fishermen of that time could tell you they were starting to experience declining catch rates, most scientists and managers never recognized a major problem.
The late fisheries scientist Jeff Hutchings contended that was because scientists and managers did not think the inshore fishery was a reliable source of information.
'Led us down the garden path'
Besides, the scientific projections showed growth in Atlantic cod to be (in everyday terms) remarkably rosy.
"I think modelling was one of the things that led us down the garden path in the '80s, and I fear that overconfidence in model projections is doing the same thing now," Rose told me in an interview.
The growth projections for cod then, as they are now, were informed by modelling, as an essential part of stock assessments.
"Stock" is a group of fish usually of the same species in a geographical area.
"Stock assessments" evaluate the status of stock based on then and now life history characteristics including age, growth, natural morality, productivity (reproductive growth), feeding habits, habitat, and fishing pressures.
"Modelling" draws this assessment information into its mathematical equations, in turn, simulating projections (i.e., what is likely to happen) and real-world options (i.e., what happens if various approaches are taken) in a virtual environment.
Today there's scientific agreement that the cod population modelling of the 1980s was flawed by the assumption of strong productivity, or growth, of northern cod, a stock of Atlantic cod that extended from southern Labrador to the Grand Banks.
A footnote in the 1995 Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries report captures it this way: "Assessments and projections were incorrectly based on constant growth rates and recruitment levels based on 1960s and 1970s data (even though those levels proved to be much lower)."
As is often the case with great catastrophes, the cod collapse presented a vast opportunity for even greater discovery.
Undoing the assumptions behind the scientific modelling of the day would prove just the beginning of that learning.
An eye on ecology and climate change
Another example is how the cod collapse renewed attention on ecology, the branch of biology that considers how organisms relate to one another and their environment.
In A Primer of Life Histories, Hutchings credits the collapse as informing the development of the field of fisheries conservation biology, which aims to identify measures to rebuild at-risk fish populations and their ecosystems. Around the same time, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, founded in the mid-1960s, began adding marine fishes to its species at risk assessments too.
Today, IUCN maintains the world's most comprehensive information source on the global extinction risk status of species at iucnredlist.org. Atlantic cod has been on that list since 1996.
Within a few years of the collapse, the limitations of fisheries science and management were becoming abundantly clear, as detailed in the 1995 Senate committee's fisheries report. "The scientific assessment of fish populations and fisheries management in general is not a precise discipline; the fishery is a complex system and no individual species within it can be treated in isolation, which significant tinkering with any part of it can set up reverberations that echo throughout the whole," it read.
"In other words, the removal of one species may affect the abundance (and profitability) of others. Canada might have some of the best fisheries science in the world, but we are only at the beginning of putting together the pieces in understanding how the ecosystem really works."
By 1998, Fisheries and Oceans Canadahad also recognized the role of environment and climate change in fisheries science and management. The founding document of the Atlantic Zonal Monitoring Program, which follows climate change and variability in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, noted "changes in climate cannot be ignored as an explanation for fluctuations in marine resources."
The problem with relying on models
So where have these vast learnings taken us 25 to 30 years on?
Fisheries management remains highly dependent on modelling. (For a more in-depth discussion on modelling, check out this explainer.)
For a practical understanding of how reliable modelling is, consider an example drawn from most people's daily lives: weather forecasts. "If you don't like the weather, then wait 15 minutes" was the entertainingly accurate phrase accompanying weather segments on CFCB in Corner Brook (I was the on-air announcer).
"If you look at weather forecast predictions, then you realize their predictive ability is poor and uncertain," said Rose.
"Why should we expect fisheries models to be any better?"
But that uncertainty can be mitigated, at least in part, by taking a longer view (be it on weather patterns or stock status) and, in the case of fisheries models, conducting strong at-sea science to gather ecological data.
Failing ships, failing stocks, no survey? Come on. We're supposed to be a first-world, modern, science-based country.- George Rose
Rose, who has spent more time at sea studying Atlantic cod in Canada than any other scientist, says real-world experience, collecting biological and ecological data in the field, is what allows scientists to interrogate models for accuracy and build better assumptions to support them.
But consider that last year, albeit for the first time in 45 years (since 1977), DFO's delayed research vessel maintenance schedule meant government scientists could not conduct their annual fall trawl multispecies survey. That failing means this year's northern cod stock assessment has been cancelled.
"Northern cod is one of the most data rich stocks. This year was the first year the northern cod assessment was cancelled due to data gaps," said Fisheries and Oceans Canada on June 27, responding to my information request.
Short-changing science
The cancelled survey also short-changes what many scientists already consider bare-bones annual capelin science.
"This year, rather than a full assessment for capelin, there will be an update," reads DFO's March 15 media release.
The last time the capelin stock assessment was cancelled was in 2017 as there was no survey conducted in 2016, again due to mechanical issues with the vessel, but capelin surveys have been underway since 1982.
"Failing ships, failing stocks, no survey? Come on. We're supposed to be a first-world, modern, science-based country," said Rose.
Now retired, Rose spent 25 years (1990-2015) conducting spring survey research on cod spawning and migration. Today, annual stock assessments for cod and capelin are dependent on a single survey (or this year, no survey at all). And keep in mind, DFO deems both cod and capelin stocks to be in the critical zone.
For added context, one in five stocks is critically depleted in Canada, while the status of another third is uncertain due to insufficient data. The table below illustrates this.
DFO identifies three stock status zones (healthy, cautious, and critical) as part of its precautionary approach—a sustainable fisheries management approach that calls for caution in fish harvesting decision-making when scientific knowledge is uncertain.
The approach requires reference points: an upper stock reference point (USR) identifies the boundary above which a fishery can be considered healthy, while a limit reference point (LRP) identifies the boundary below which a fishery is considered in a critical state. Canada is making progress on establishing these reference points, but currently half the stocks DFO manages lack USRs, while a third lack LRPs.
According to the 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement, fisheries must have these reference points established.
'This is not going to rebuild anything'
In the case of Northern cod, these parameters are built into the stock's first-ever rebuilding plan, which is required under 2019 provisions to the federal Fisheries Act calling for protecting depleted fish stocks in Canada and their habitats.
"It might be, at best, a status quo plan. They're trying to sell it as a rebuilding plan, but this is not going to rebuild anything," argued Rose, who says the plan, which lacks timelines and targets, does not grant enough weight to the role overfishing played in the 1992 cod collapse, nor in cod's stalled rebuilding of late. If, as the plan (and scientific literature on the topic) purports, natural causes due to reduced capelin prey is the more pressing problem, asks Rose, then why does DFO allow a commercial capelin fishery? (But that's a question for policymakers, not scientists).
Meanwhile, on issues of climate and ecosystems-based management, 30 years on, these efforts remain in the early days.
To be sure, climate variables are increasingly incorporated into stock assessments. And yet, the management plans and related quota decisions have yet to integrate the impacts of climate change into how fisheries are managed, while also still favouring single-species (rather than multispecies or ecosystem-based) approaches.
A comeback can still be achieved
Where does all of this leave us?
The cod are not back, but they can make a comeback. Wild fish, after all, are a renewable resource.
At the same time, the challenges ahead — from contending with the ghost effects of poor past management practices to the many unknowns associated with climate change to the ways in which we still interact with cod, as a harvest and in their habitat — remain great.
Understanding and dealing with these challenges requires strong science efforts.
No single approach, or model, will suffice.
We need scientists, working with fishermen and fishing communities, to keep doing the work in the boats in the harbours where the cod collapse happened and is still happening today.
The work must continue. Our lessons from the cod collapse have not yet stuck—and we're still learning those lessons today.
As one DFO scientist, Mariano Koen-Alonso, put it to me: "As science advances, scientific explanations and interpretations are likely to change, and those changes build upon what was there before, sometimes to refute it, sometimes to reinforce it, and more often than not, to add nuance to the explanation."
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