Offshore cod stocks off Newfoundland are “doing very, very poorly,” according to George Lilly, fisheries ecologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, but they are not “in peril,” as had been reported.
“Those were not my words,” Lilly said from his office in St John’s, Newfoundland, “but the situation, obviously, is serious, as it has been for decades.”
According to a cod Science Advisory Report released in May by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the spawner biomass of the [Newfoundland East Coast] cod stock as a whole “remains far below any conservation limit reference level as generally applied through the precautionary approach to fisheries management…it is anticipated to lie above 300,000 tons.”
Information is provided for the offshore and inshore separately.
“In the offshore,” the report stated, “the 2004 research bottom-trawl surveys during both spring and autumn indicate that the biomass of cod remains extremely low. The average biomass index from autumn surveys during 2002-2004 is about 19,000 tons, which is less than 2 percent of the average during the 1980s. An index of spawner biomass in the offshore is currently at about 1 percent of the level during the 1980s.”
Lilly said that the reasons for the continued decline are not clear.
“More research is needed, but it appears that two factors are involved – human and natural. Outside the 200-mile limit as far as we know foreign overfishing is still going on, but that’s not the major problem. On the southern Grand Banks bycatch of cod continues to be a problem by both foreign and Canadian vessels.”
Lilly continued, “Recruitment levels are extremely low, and mortality rates are extremely high. One problem is that the natural food supply is not what it should be. The status of capelin [a staple of cod diets] is uncertain. What we do know is that we’ve seen very few capelin.”
Seals continue to be a problem, but Lilly said the evidence of predation is clearer for the inshore fishery than for the offshore.
“General assessments indicate that seals may contribute to the problem. This may seem wishy-washy,” he says. “We have clear evidence where the inshore fishery is concerned, but in fact there’s very little offshore [seal] stomach data. The problem with offshore seals is that to get stomach data, you have to kill the seal in open water, and that’s not easy.”
Lilly did say that the past focus on harp seals is being extended to include hooded seals.
As for the future of the cod fishery, he said, “we’re not seeing any signs of recovery; we’re clearly decades away.”