Common fishing gear types

Longlines, trawling and the use of gillnets are the fishing methods that most commonly result in bycatch.

The two most common harvest strategies are (a) fixed exploitation rate, in which an attempt is made to take a constant fraction of the fish stock each year, and (b) constant escapement, in which an attempt is made to maintain the spawning stock size near some constant level (Figure 4.1).

• Demersal or bottom trawl. What’s bottom trawling?
• Gillnets. What’s gillnet fishing?
• Longlines. What’s longline fishing?
• Purse seine. What’s purse seine fishing?
• Pole and line. What is pole and line fishing?
• Pots and traps. What is pots and traps fishing?
• Dredges.
• Pelagic or midwater trawls.

Catches of salt cod supported nearly 400 schooners in each of these ports, and a multitude of shore-side businesses including salt mining, ice harvesting in fresh-water ponds, and a boat building industry that made the shipyards on the Essex River among the busiest and best known in the world.

Before that, Newfoundland had been governed by Proprietary Governors, who ruled under a charter issued by the King (1610–1728); Commodore-Governors, senior Royal Navy officers who administered law and order through three non-resident “Fishing Admirals” – the first ships’ captains to enter harbour each year (1729–1825); …

New England’s cod population has been diminished by new fishing technology, too many boats and foreign vessels, and poor management decisions. Both major stocks of North Atlantic cod in US waters – the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod – are overfished. “This used to be the biggest fishing community in the world.

Atlantic cod stocks collapsed in the mid-1990s and are in such disarray that the species is now listed as one step above endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

And, since 2017, the recovery of Northern cod has stalled. Current levels of fishing coupled with mortality due to natural causes are impeding stock growth. Use of the 2017 catches as a baseline is not precautionary.

Global cod fisheries are expected to harvest just over 1.5 million metric tons (MT) in 2020, roughly the same amount harvested in 2019. As supplies remain strong but relatively stagnant, demand for the fish appears strong, with the price per MT in 2019 higher than at any other points in the past decade.

The disaster of the Grand Banks is a compendium of the mistake being made in fisheries all over the world. When scientists began to manage the Banks in the 1950s the promised to assign “safe” quotas to Canadian and foreign fleet They failed. The cod catch fell from 810,000 tonnes in 1968 to 150000 tonnes by 1977.

Fishing quotas are often set too high, based on the catches of good years. When overfishing, natural fluctuations in productivity, or a combination of the two, causes the catch to drop, governments typically prop up the fishery, assuring that over-harvesting will continue into the future.

The devastating collapse of the once iconic Northern Atlantic cod fishery in the early 1990s remains one of the most globally recognized cases of overfishing. Today, cod populations remain at low levels, with only a few populations showing signs of slow recovery.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s historic cod fisheries attracted local and international fishing fleets for almost five centuries before the Canadian government shut the industry down indefinitely in July 1992. This resulted in an overexploitation of northern cod, which ultimately forced Ottawa to impose a moratorium.

The collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s was caused by a confluence of negative factors, including fishing mortality that was higher than intended because of overestimation of stock size during the 1980s, a decision not to reduce fishing mortality dramatically when a sudden and severe downward reevaluation of …

France was the most important participant in the transatlantic fishery for much of the 16th and 17th centuries – it sent more ships overseas than other nations, harvested more fish, and maintained a near monopoly of Newfoundland’s south, west, and northeast coasts.

Overfishing Not Solely to Blame for New England Cod Collapse. The researchers found that, since 1980, NAO conditions have accounted for up to 17 per cent of the decline in New England cod stocks.