Todd > wrote:
: >
: > I'm fond of fish & chips, which used to be Northwest Atlantic cod.
: >
: > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_cod#Northwest_Atlantic_cod>
: > In the winter of 2011-2012, the cod fishery succeeded in convincing NOAA
: > to postpone for one year the planned 82% reduction in catch limits.
: > Instead the limit will be reduced by 22%. The fishery brought in $15.8
: > million in 2010, coming second behind Georges Bank haddock among the
: > region?s 20 regulated bottom-dwelling groundfish. Data released in 2011
: > indicated that even closing the fishery would not allow populations to
: > rebound by 2014 to levels required under federal law. Restrictions on
: > cod effectively limit fishing on other groundfish species with which the
: > cod swim, such as flounder and haddock.
: >

: Hi Billy,

: Something went really, really wrong with that Cod fishery. The
: game managers must have really screwed up something big time.
: I hope they get it back to sustainable levels before too long
: with the absolute minimum of job loss. We may all have
: to settle on flounder or haddock for a while. As has been
: said before on these pages, man does not live by fish
: alone. :-)

: I would hate to have happen what happened in Japan to
: their herring population. Use to be like Alaska's.
: Now it is permanently gone (over harvesting).

: -T

Cod used to be enormously abundant but ws grossly overfished and whten
they brought in the big Russia and other european ships it became even
more over fished. In addition, the harp seals who have the cut
whitefurred babies that used tobe hunted heavily off Greenland, eat cod.
Now their populatin has exploded because the hunting was
forbidden(remember all thebusiness about slubbing the baby seals on the
Greenland ice? so even with controlled fishing by humans the population
ccannot recover very fast. cod is a large fish when adult adn takes
aquite a while to be able to reproduce so that slows everyting down. when
I was a child cod was a cheap fish eaten by the poor. Now it is scarce,
limited in catch and quite expensive. Europe used to survive on salt cod
for humdreds of years. Now it is harder adn more expensive to get.

It is NOT a short fish and game department problem that can be fixed in a
season or two. It will take decades if ther is not toomuch cheatingand
cod smuggling. If they do not control the catch it may well never
recoverc. Right now the same thing is happening with Chilean Sea BAss
which is also a very large and slow developing fish that needs years to
reach breeding maturity. With the overfishing most of the adults are gone
adn there is exptreme danger of the entire population being wiped out
because they don't wnat to leave the youngsters in the sea to mature and
breed.

One should thnk of these things before buyin these fish.

Wendy