April 22, 2013 — As long as there have been fishermen, there has been overfishing. Breaking that cycle is the central challenge facing fishermen, fishery scientists and regulators, and anyone who likes to eat fish or have fishermen as neighbors.
In his latest book, The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail, Professor Jeffrey Bolster chronicles more than a millenium of overfishing. Depletion of river fish in Europe, he argues, is what led to the rise of ocean fishing around 1000A.D. Five hundred years later, European coastal waters had become so depleted that fishermen once again moved on to more fruitful waters. By 1600, tens of thousands of Europeans could be found fishing the waters of the northwest Atlantic – the now storied fishing grounds that stretch from Cape Cod to the Scotian Shelf.
When the 2013 fishing season opens in a week and a half, Gulf of Maine cod fishermen will be facing a nearly 80% cut in their catch allowances. That’s what fishery scientists say is necessary to halt overfishing and allow fragile cod stocks to rebound.
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