Ecological Amnesia: Reflections on Historical Change and the Northern Cod Moratorium

By Andrew Nurse

On June 26^th, Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced what it called the “historic decision” to end the northern cod moratorium. Its press release was, in fact, at pains to establish this decision’s supposedly historic character in a twofold sense. First, the announcement suggests that a long period in Atlantic regional history – the era of the moratorium – was at an end and a new, brighter future was about to dawn. Second, the end of the moratorium re-connected Newfoundlanders to their own past and culture. There is good reason to wonder if either of these statements is true.

The 1992 northern cod moratorium and the historical processes that led to it are among the most studied elements of Atlantic Canadian environmental and fishing history. The historical development of the Atlantic Canadian fishing industry is commemorated in museums, a heritage minute, artwork, song, and an alternative history comic book. As Sandy Hunter has noted, Newfoundland fisheries history involved an intricate interconnection to the development of trans-Atlantic colonialism. The recent Fisheries and Oceans Canada announcement is also an instance of what Michael Price has identified for the Pacific salmon fisheries as a case of ecological amnesia.

How so? First, the re-opening of the fisheries is controversial. At the same time Fisheries and Oceans proclaims that beginning of a new era, others are not so sure, including the people who would do the fishing. They have good cause. Fisheries and Oceans uses a three-tiered scale that defines whether cod stocks can be sustained in a commercial fishery. Recent revisions in methodology – including longer term historical modeling – have moved federal assessments of the stock from the “critical” level to “cautious,” which allows for the re-opening of the fisheries.

The problem is that Fisheries and Oceans arrived at this decision by, in effect, changing the definitions of “critical” and “cautious.” There has, in fact, been no growth in the cod stock since at least 2016. Said differently, what has changed is the definition of cautious; not the number of fish in the water. No matter how it is assessed, northern cod spawning biomass remains far lower than it was earlier in Canadian history.

Second, in practice, the official conclusion of the moratorium is more a difference of degree than kind. A small commercial fishery has existed since 2006. What we are seeing is an expansion of this commercial fishery as opposed to the epochal change the announcement forecasts. While I think caution is warranted, what we are seeing is a policy pronouncement that is delivering something other than what it says.

Third, the idea that cod fishing reconnects Newfoundland communities to their history is problematic stereotype. The connection between fishing, culture, community, and history is a common trope. Is it true?

As Miriam Wright’s masterful study of Newfoundland fishing history illustrates, this kind of language disguises the fundamental changes that had overtaken the fishing industry and fishing work by the late 1960s.[i] The connection between fishing and culture mobilizes images of the inshore fishery with fish drying on a rocky beach. Yet, by 1970, the industrialization of the Newfoundland fishing industry was nearly complete. As Wright’s work also showed, its gender relations had changed fundamentally. Education and state subsidies were key aspects of reconstructed fishing industry.[ii]

This is also a history strewn with repeated reports, task forces, mismanagement, and a near complete failure to understand the ecological relations of the oceans. Beginning in the late 1960s, Newfoundland fisheries entered a cycle of economic crises that required greater and greater levels of state intervention. My own view is that the kind of nostalgia promoted by Fisheries and Oceans does not serve anyone well. In this case, history may not be a past time to which communities can reconnect but a cautionary tale to which different voices are speaking.

Ecological amnesia points to historical problems with baseline measurements. In the case of fisheries, it assumes a healthy fish stock at a certain point in the past and then measures contemporary stock numbers against that assumption. But why make that assumption? In this case, the decisions reflect modeling that uses available data because it is available; not because it is necessarily accurate. Other longer-term historical modelling seems to show something different: catches need to be maintained at levels remarkably lower than those of the recent past.

History carries with it important lessons. It is one of the reasons that sites like Activehistory.ca devote so much time to connections between the past and the present. One lesson that we might learn from the fisheries history relates to humility. Contemporary models are certainly better than those used in the 1980s and 1990s, but that is not the issue. The people and the policies in the past who drove the northern cod to near extinction believed they understood ocean ecology and fishing. It turns out, they were wrong. And, exactly how climate change fits into this picture is also unclear.

The northern cod moratorium fundamentally changed Newfoundland. It prompted the greatest workforce reduction in Canadian history. The exact number of people affected is still not 100% clear but it ranged above 30,000. The population of the province is still lower than it was before the moratorium. The government programs that were supposed to support the population ran out of money faster than forecasted.

In a suggestive post for NiCHE, Sandy Hunter suggested a different way of seeing the moratorium and the near extinction of northern cod. This way would connect our time not to a nostalgic past in the manner of the Fisheries and Oceans announcement, but to broader processes of environmental history, the Anthropocene and sixth great extinction. What the moratorium’s history can show us is how we arrived at this place and how Canadians responded to it.

For that reason alone, this remains an important story to accurately tell and one with many parts. As part of this history, it is not surprising that Fisheries and Oceans is not meeting this standard.

Andrew Nurse is a Professor of Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University.

[i] Miriam Wright, A Fishery for Modern Times: The State and the Industrialization of the Newfoundland Fishery, 1934-1968 (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2001).

[ii] Miriam Wright, “Young Men and Technology: Government Attempts to Create a ‘Modern’ Fisheries Workforce in Newfoundland, 194901970” Labour/Le Travail 42 (1998): 143-60.