Turn your browser to a new blog from The Navigator.
For those who don’t know it, The Navigator is a monthly magazine about the fishery for people in the industry in Atlantic Canada and the northeastern United States.
The Skipper’s Blog is written by managing editor Jaime Baker, late of the Telegram and the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ Union. The subject matter for blog posts will likely be some aspect of the fishery but as Jaime told SRBP on Thursday, it could include other issues. One post this week was about the young boy who offered his soccer medal to the Canadian men’s relay team.
Jamie’s most recent post is about a story this week about a resurgence in cod stocks:
While many outside the fishery may not have moved on from cod after the moratorium, the fishermen and the industry certainly did.
Last year’s $1 billion fishery was built largely on crab and shrimp. Believe it or not, a resurgence in cod right now to historic levels would actually throw a bit of a monkey-wrench into that industry.
How? Two ways.
One, cod are voracious predators and they tend to eat things like shrimp and juvenile crab (and anything else that is around). Most fishermen will tell you, in places where the cod are scarce, the shellfish tend to do well; and in places where the cod are plenty, the shellfish tend to not do well at all. And we should note there was very little in the way of crab or shrimp in this part of the world when the cod fishery was rocking out like The Who on speedballs. In fact, some scientists will tell you the fact that we have had crab and shrimp in these numbers is an anomaly.
His second point is that the local industry has re-oriented away from cod to the point where they’d have a hard time handling any sizable landings.
Other than maybe on the fisheries broadcast, that likely isn’t the sort of stuff you’ve been hearing. Check out Jaime’s blog: the opinions are both frank and well-informed.
-srbp-
