Half a millennium of fishing records shows Canada could have saved the Atlantic cod.
Almost 30 years ago, the cod fishery that had sustained commercial fishers in Newfoundland and Labrador for centuries came to an abrupt end, with a government-imposed moratorium aimed at saving the collapsing cod population. The moratorium put 30,000 people out of work and blighted the province’s economy for decades. Now, new research shows that the collapse was not inevitable, and that—if it weren’t for short-term thinking decades earlier—the cod fishery could have been viable to this day. The research offers lessons that may help save other floundering fisheries worldwide. Read more in Hakai.