30 Years After Atlantic Cod Collapse, Canada's New Fishery "Plan" Doesn't Even Mention Climate
Canada’s foremost fisheries biologists say Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s plan to rebuild Atlantic cod is “riddled with weaknesses from a science and policy perspective” and “it’s unclear whether it will help or hinder a cod recovery.” The commentary, published last week in Policy Options, is the latest criticism of the federal strategy, which was released in December and is among the first plans the department has produced since 2019 amendments to the Fisheries Act requiring it to protect habitat and rebuild populations of critically depleted fish.
Next year marks 30 years since the 1992 cod moratorium, when the federal government shuttered Newfoundland and Labrador’s cod fishery. Although cod remains under moratoria, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) reopened a small, inshore commercial cod fishery called the “stewardship” fishery 15 years ago.
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According to the plan, “natural causes,” such as the effects of warmer ocean temperatures and starvation due to depleted capelin, cod’s primary fish prey, are preventing a cod comeback more so than fishing. And yet, the plan offers no actions to counteract these threats and doesn’t even mention “climate.”
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Fisheries biologists, meanwhile, have criticized the federal fisheries department’s actions to increase fishing pressure on critically depleted cod stocks. In 2019, George Rose and Carl Walters published a study showing that Fisheries and Oceans Canada had underestimated the role of overfishing and overestimated the role of natural causes in the collapse as well as in more recent recovery efforts. The finding suggests the federal department’s decision to increase the cod fishing quota in the stewardship fishery runs counter to the best scientific advice, Hutchings says. Back in 2017, Rose and another colleague, Sherrylynn Rowe, wrote an open letter to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, urging the department to hold off on ramping up the northern cod fishery given stocks were “still well below historical norms.”
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https://thenarwhal.ca/atlantic-cod-dfo-canada-plan/
= new reply since forum marked as read
