Canada Ends Moratorium on Cod After 32 Years

The Canadian government has ended the Newfoundland and Labrador cod moratorium, which gutted the Atlantic province's economy and transformed its small communities more than 30 years ago. The Fisheries Department announced Wednesday it would reestablish a commercial cod fishery in the province, with a total allowable catch of 18,000 tons for the 2024 season, the AP reports.

• "Ending the northern cod moratorium is a historic milestone for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians," said federal Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier. "We will cautiously but optimistically build back this fishery with the prime beneficiaries being coastal and Indigenous communities throughout Newfoundland and Labrador."

• Ottawa announced the devastating cod moratorium on July 2, 1992. Cod stocks off the province's northern and eastern coasts were collapsing, and the moratorium was introduced as a way to help them recover. Before then, the cod fishery was a primary economic driver in the province, and the moratorium put tens of thousands of people out of work.
• John Crosbie, who was federal fisheries minister at the time, famously said, "I didn't take the fish out of the goddamned water!" to a group of fishermen upset about the dwindling fish stocks. He announced the moratorium a day later.
• With fish plants closing and jobs drying up, young people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador began to leave for St. John's or mainland Canada to find work. Between 1991 and 2001, the province's population fell by about 10%, largely because of people leaving outport communities.

• The cod moratorium was supposed to last for two years. But when that deadline passed, fish stocks did not show signs of recovering. Last year, Fisheries Department scientists announced they had used new modelling showing the cod stock was out of the "critical zone" for the first time in decades.
• Now the stock is in the "cautious zone," which means fisheries decisions should still prioritize regrowth. The total catch of 18,000 tons for the 2024 season is just a fraction of what it was—120,000 tons, according to a government website—in February 1992, just months before the moratorium.

(More Newfoundland stories.)