Seminar Abstract:

The collapse of commercial fisheries for Atlantic cod throughout eastern Canada has resulted in massive social disruptions, the loss of work for 40,000 fisheries workers, and has cost the Canadiangovernment morethan 4 billion dollars on special fisheries relief programs.Iwill examine thebiological, economic, bureaucratic, and political basis forthis environmental disaster.

The biological basis for the collapse can is easily understood: On average the maximum reproductive rate for cod (from any populationin the North Atlantic) is very high, each spawner can produce onaverage about 20 replacements at low population density if no fishing occurs. Political and bureaucratic pressure  kept fishing mortality high.

The rapidity of the collapse deserves special attention:when the quotas were not reduced, fishers changed their behaviour to target smaller fish, as no large fish was left. Unfortunately, discarding increased,and the young fish that could have sustained the fishery were killed. This change in behaviour meant the models used to assess the fish were incorrect.

The normal bio-economic feedbacks for such a fishery were not present because of large subsidies to the fishery. I show how historically, from 1700 to 1860, the immigration rate fromNewfoundland was strongly connected to the catch rate in the fishery.The subsidieseffectively eliminated this feedback mechanism.

Finally, I will look at overexploitation and extinction in the ocean as a global problem.

Streaming Video:   Each clip is in QuickTime format runsapproximately 9.5 minutes.  The Quick Time Previewer canbe downloaded from : http://www.apple.com/quicktime/preview/

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Ransom Myers has been the Killam Chairin Ocean Studies at the Dalhousie University's Department of Biology since 1997. Myers research interests have been extremely diverse ranging from copepods to fish to marine mammals, stock assessment and survey methods and analysis of the Stock Recruitment Database which consists of maps, plots, and numerical data relating to over 600 fish populations from around the world.
 

Photo: 

• R. A. Myers and J.A. Hutchings and N. J. Barrowman, 1997,  Why do fish stocks collapse? The example of cod in  Eastern Canada, Ecological Applications 7:91--106,

• R. A. Myers and K.G. Bowenand N. J. Barrowman, 1999,  Maximum reproductive rate of fish at low population sizes,  Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 56: 2404--2419.

Ram Myers   Personal Link

Last modified 12/9/2001        

Please sumbit any questions or comments to: susfish@u.washington.edu