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Collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery

On July 2, 1992, the Honourable John Crosbie, Canadian Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, declared a two-year moratorium on the Northern Cod fishery, a designated fishing region off the coast of Newfoundland, after data showed that the total cod biomass had suffered a collapse to less than 1% of its normal value. The minister championed the measure as a temporary solution, allowing the cod population time to recover. The fisheries had long shaped the lives and communities on Canada's Atlantic eastern coast for the preceding five centuries. Societies which are dependent on fishing have a strong mutual relationship with them: the act of fishing changes the ecosystems' balance, which forces the fishery and, in turn, the fishing societies to adapt to new ecological conditions.

The near-complete destruction of the Atlantic northwest cod biomass off the shores devastated coastal communities, which had been overexploiting the same cod population for decades. The fishermen along the Atlantic northwest had employed modern fishing technologies, including the ecologically-devastating practice of trawling, especially in the years leading up to the 1990s, in the misguided belief that fishing stocks are perpetually plentiful and unable to be depleted. After this assumption was empirically and abruptly shown to be incorrect, to the dismay of government officials and rural workers, some 19,000 fishermen and cod processing plant workers in Newfoundland lost their employment. The powerful economic engine of rural Newfoundland coughed, wheezed, and died. Nearly 40,000 workers and harvesters in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador applied for the federal relief program TAGS (the Atlantic Groundfish Strategy). Abandoned and rusting fishing boats still litter the coasts of Newfoundland and the Canadian northwest to this day.

The fishery minister, John Crosbie, after delivering a speech on the day before the declaration of the moratorium, or July 1, 1992, was publicly heckled and verbally harassed by disgruntled locals at a fishing village. The moratorium, initially lasting for only two years, was indefinitely extended after it became evident that cod populations had not recovered at all but, instead, had continued to spiral downward in both size and numbers, due to the damage caused by decades of horrible fishing practices, and the fact that the moratorium had permitted exceptions for food fisheries for "personal consumption" purposes to this very day. Some 12,000 tons of Northwest cod are still being caught every year along the Newfoundland coast by local fishermen.

The collapse of the four-million ton biomass, which had persevered through several previous marine extinctions over tens of millions of years, in a timespan of no more than 20 years, is oft-cited by researchers as one of the most visible examples of the phenomenon of the "Tragedy of the Commons." Factors which had been implicated as contributing to the collapse include: overfishing; government mismanagement; the disregard of scientific uncertainty; warming habitat waters; declining reproduction; and plain human ignorance. The Northern Cod biomass has been recovering slowly since the imposition of the moratorium. However, as of 2021, the growth of the cod population has been stagnant since 2017, and some scientists argue that the population will not rebound unless the Fisheries Department of Canada lower its yearly quota to 5,000 tons.