NORTH Atlantic cod may never recover from the effects of overfishing, forcing us to eat less palatable species such as sea cucumber and jellyfish.
Stocks of cod crashed 10 years ago, and a fishing ban was put in place off the east coast of Canada to allow them to recover. But it may be too late, says Alida Bundy from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia: the population dynamics of cod have been altered so severely that they might never reappear in their former numbers. Adult cod prey on species such as herring and mackerel that compete with or eat juvenile cod, she says. It鈥檚 possible that without a big population of adult cod, the juveniles never get a chance to grow.
Her warning comes alongside a new model suggesting that overall fish numbers are continuing to decline in the North Atlantic. According to the first comprehensive model of the entire North Atlantic, the number of catch species has drastically declined over the past century, and continues to fall by about 2 per cent each year because of overfishing.
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The model, developed by an international team of scientists and led by Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia, suggests that the amount of high-quality table fish such as cod, tuna, haddock and flounder has fallen to about 13 million tonnes 鈥� a sixth of what it was in 1900.
鈥淭he North Atlantic will continue to be overfished as long as you鈥檙e trying to find someplace for all those fishing boats to go,鈥� says Andrew Rosenberg, a member of the team from the University of New Hampshire. 鈥淟ess is actually more with fisheries. If you fish less you get more fish.鈥�
The model also shows that catches have fallen by about half since 1950, despite a tripling of the effort that goes into fishing. Government subsidies to North Atlantic fisheries totalling about $2.5 billion a year are intended to cut down on overfishing by giving fishermen another source of income. But the team says this has only driven fishermen to catch other species rather than stopping fishing altogether.
鈥淛ellyfish is already being exported,鈥� says Pauly. 鈥淚n the Gulf of Maine people were catching cod a few decades ago. Now they鈥檙e catching sea cucumber. By the standards of a few decades ago these things were repulsive,鈥� he says. If things don鈥檛 change, says Reg Watson from the University of British Columbia, 鈥渨e鈥檒l all be eating jellyfish sandwiches鈥�.
