Who Killed the Grand Banks: The Untold Story Behind the Decimation of One of the World's Greatest Natural Resources

by Alex Rose

While John Cabot's landfall may be in dispute, what he discovered is cod-and lots of them... Historic accounts say that Cabot lowered a basket weighted with stones into the North Atlantic, then hauled it back up brimming with cod. The discovery of these fertile fishing grounds set of a centuries-long struggle among Basque, Portuguese, French, and English fishermen, and established a pattern of far-flung coastal settlements, called outports by Newfoundlanders, that ring the island. And so the legend fits the Grand Banks became Valhalla, a miraculous, self-sustaining Eight Wonder of the world, feeding the known world for 500 years. The catastrophic collapse of the fisheries, circa 1992, was unprecedente4d. An ecological disaster to rival any other-the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest notwithstanding-in modern history. This made-in-Canada plunder was part human greed, part stupidity, and part rapacity. Tarnishing Canada's standing within the international community, it holds the reputation of Canada's once-vaunted fisheries scientists up to ridicule. Sixteen years later, no one has taken accountability or apologized for the ruination of a centuries-old way of life and, taken accountability or apologized for the ruination of a centuries-old way of life and, more shocking, a stock recovery plan has yet to be produced... There can be no forgetting-or forgiving-such catastrophic pillaging, Sparked by a second wave of environmentalism focusing on the state of the world's oceans, the Grand Banks cod collapse became a talking point, a sujet noir, now studied at universities and fisheries research centres, wherein students from around the world repeat this we must never allow our fisheries to go the way of the Grand Banks cod.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rose notes the walls of silence that commonly greet him in Newfoundland's coffee shops, bars, or offices. The resentment of prying outsiders, government officials and voracious foreign fishing fleets is understandable. It must have been a tough book to research. But as our investigator demonstrates quite obviously, it was the Canadian trawler fleet that actually did the damage. After expanding it's offshore territory to 200 miles and claiming the bulk of the Grand Banks for Canadians only in 1977, the government-subsidized industry expanded it's fleet dramatically. The upgraded local fleet then proceeded to bulldoze the seabed and vacuum the fish stocks till the environmental collapse of 1992.
The book does it's main service in highlighting the destruction caused by seabed trawling, which levels the ocean floor like a clear-cut, devastating the food chain at its base. Hopefully rising awareness of that issue will lead to growing no-trawl zones.

[Ty Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so annoyingly repetitive, it feels like an essay I started working on the day that it is due.

There is way too much content about west coast salmon management considering the book is presented as being about the cod moratorium.

The only upside is that I got some insight into political incentives leading to DFO mismanagement. I wish I had read one of the other books on that subject.

All mentions of Indigenous peoples in this book are unabashedly paternalistic and colonial.

[Warren Mcpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A humbling read. All Canadians should understand the lesson here, I doubt many do.