Lament for an Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery, A True Crime Story

by Michael Harris

The northern cod have been almost wiped out. Once the most plentiful fish on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, the cod is now on the brink of extinction, and tens of thousands of people in Atlantic Canada have been left without work by a 1992 moratorium on fishing the stock. Today, the Pacific salmon stocks are in similar trouble – victims of the same blind, stupid greed.

Angry, accusatory fingers have been pointed at various possible culprits for the collapse of the cod – at the Spanish and Portuguese, who for hundreds of years sent ever-bigger fleets to the Grand Banks; at the factory-freezer trawlers, which “vacuumed” the ocean floor for the prized fish; at those inshore fishermen who circumvented the rules governing the fishery; at the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is responsible for managing the fishery; at the harp seal, the cod’s competitor for food, whose numbers have exploded in recent years; even at Nature, for lowering the temperature of the ocean.

In Lament for an Ocean, the award-winning true-crime writer Michael Harris investigates the real causes of the most wanton destruction of a natural resource in North American history since the buffalo were wiped off the face of the prairies. The story he carefully unfolds is the sorry tale of how, despite the repeated and urgent warnings of ocean scientists, the northern cod was ruthlessly exploited.

Genres: Science, History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 11, 1998

About the author

One of Canada’s top investigative writers, Michael Terry Harris was winner of the 1995 Arthur Ellis Award for best true crime book for The Prodigal Husband: The Tragedy of Helmuth and Hannah Buxbaum. Formerly the publisher of the Sunday Express in St. John’s and later the Executive Director of News and Current Affairs for the Newfoundland Broadcasting Corporation, Harris has also been Queen’s Park correspondent for the National Post, and a national affairs columnist for the Sun News Service. Today, he host’s his own radio program, “Michael Harris Live,” on CFRA in Ottawa.

Harris’s previous books consist of the award-winners Justice Denied: The Law versus Donald Marshall (1986), Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel (1990), Rare Ambition: The Crosbies of Newfoundland (1992), The Prodigal Husband (1994). The Judas Kiss: The Undercover Life of Patrick Kelly (1995), was made into a television movie starring Paul Gross, and Lament for an Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery (1998) was a national bestseller. To date, his work has sparked four royal commissions of inquiry.

Reviews

[Jdblair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in our room at a Bed & Breakfast in Bonavista, Newfoundland in 2007. It was during our first visit to Newfoundland that we heard about the demise of the Atlantic Fishery and the effect on the small communities of Atlantic Canada. I ordered the book when we returned to Texas. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and later wrote Mr. Harris and thanked him for the book.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

The text on the book jacket is far better than the text on the pages of the same book.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is good and interesting but super repetitive. I dont think that’s the author’s fault, but rather how consistently the bureaucratic and political process nukes the cod fishery. Super in depth

[Sandra]

Splendid recounting of what was happening in this Ocean.