• mozzOP
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    1 month ago

    Here’s a fun one about the fish:

    • @Mavvik@lemmy.ca
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      271 month ago

      This is kind of misleading since they closed the fishery (I think in the 90s), so the amount of cod catch would naturally plummet. The fishery did, however, need to be closed due to overfishing.

      • mozzOP
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        551 month ago

        Not exactly; it collapsed, then they closed it once it was too late, and now it’s still fucked, 30 years later.

        In the early-1990s, the industry collapsed entirely.

        In 1992, John Crosbie, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, set the quota for cod at 187,969 tonnes, even though only 129,033 tonnes had been caught the previous year.

        In 1992 the government announced a moratorium on cod fishing.[12] The moratorium was at first meant to last two years, hoping that the northern cod population would recover and the fishery. However, catches were still low,[16] and thus the cod fishery remained closed.

        By 1993 six cod populations had collapsed, forcing a belated moratorium on fishing.[14] Spawning biomass had decreased by at least 75% in all stocks, by 90% in three of the six stocks, and by 99% in the case of “northern” cod, previously the largest cod fishery in the world.[14] The previous increases in catches were wrongly thought to be due to “the stock growing” but were caused by new technologies such as trawlers.[13]

        • @Mavvik@lemmy.ca
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          111 month ago

          That’s a fair point. It still is a misleading plot since it isn’t an estimate cod population, and isn’t representative of population after 1992. As you said the numbers are still bleak. I found this plot , Source , which does tell a similar story around the early 90s but indicates greater recovery in more recent years.

    • @otp@sh.itjust.works
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      211 month ago

      You can see where they decided “Profit, with no consideration of anything else!” was the answer

      • @oo1@lemmings.world
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        91 month ago

        I’m going to guess it wasn’t a decision, so much as tech availability and pricing. radar, sonar, more powerful boats with bigger trawl nets.

        If they’d had that stuff earlier it’d be the same tragedy of the same commons.

        • @MalReynolds@slrpnk.net
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          127 days ago

          Somewhere there was an asshole who made a decision, one of our failures as a (global, makes it harder) society is failing to hold responsibility accountable. Do the crime, do the time.