March 16, 2020 — Atlantic cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland supported one of the world’s greatest fisheries for over three centuries. Yet this seemingly inexhaustible resource is in bad shape. Some stocks are now endangered and their survival could depend on removing a key predator, the grey seal.
This raises some difficult questions: How do we determine the value of one species over another, and what is the role of science in this conundrum?
My colleagues and I in the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University of British Columbia are fascinated by these questions. As an interdisciplinary group of economists, ecologists and social scientists, we commonly attribute values to animals in different ways. But determining whether to kill one animal to preserve another is less straightforward.
The collapse of the Grand Banks fisheries is considered one of the most significant failures in the history of natural resource management — akin to the ongoing degradation of the Amazon — and casts a long shadow over Canadian fisheries management.