Thursday, 4:30–5:30 pm
14 January 2010
School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences
102 Fishery Sciences (auditorium)
1122 NE Boat Street (map)
University of Washington
Reception follows each talk

Facing an Uncertain Future: The Realities of Sustainability

Jim WintonGeorge Rose

Professor of Fisheries Conservation, Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University

Facing the Grand Banks fisheries: Myths and sustainability

Abstract

The Grand Banks fisheries for Atlantic cod have existed for hundreds of years (as seasonal export fisheries since about 1500) and were sustainable until the 1950s and the arrival of unfettered international fleets of trawlers from Europe and the former Soviet blocks countries. Many species were sequentially fished down over the following 40 years, with Atlantic cod being the last to collapse in a period of poor productivity in the late 1980s and early 1990s (this finally got someone’s attention). There are several myths about these declines that have been perpetuated in published literature. The first is that only cod declined (arguably the most important species, capelin, the major food of cod historically, virtually disappeared over much of its range just before the final cod collapse – a fact ignored in most accounts of the collapse). The second is that declines began in the 1980s – in fact they can be traced back to the 1950s. A third myth is that the fisheries were the sole influence on stock declines – in some stocks, distributions, growth, and productivity all declined independent of the fisheries (some did not have fisheries) but in concert with changes in ocean climate  – this is still not well recognized. It is thought vital that fisheries management not be based on myth. New evidence of a shift to higher productivity in some of the major cod stocks, and of the geographically complex stock structures that may be necessary to sustain high productivity in cod will be discussed. Finally, the recent resurgences in some major cod stocks, in particular Flemish Cap and the formerly great “northern” cod, will be examined from both an ecological and sustainable management perspective.

Bio

George Rose [BSc (Agr) (Guelph); MSc (Laurentian); PhD (McGill)] did his doctoral research on the Labrador Straits Atlantic cod fisheries. He is currently Professor and Head of Fisheries Conservation, Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. His scientific activities include over 100 scientific manuscripts on the North Atlantic (and other) fisheries, with a book entitled “Cod: The Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fisheries” published in 2007 winning the international Independent Publisher Gold Medal for non-fiction (Canada East) and being a finalist for the Winterset Award for excellence in Newfoundland and Labrador writing (all categories). He was the first winner of the Wilfred Templeman Award for fisheries research in Newfoundland, is on the editorial board of several journals and co-authored the section on “Marine ecosystems and their services in the Arctic” in the Nobel Prize winning IPCC report on Climate Change in 2007. He has been adviser to fisheries science and management agencies in Canada, the USA, New Zealand, and Tanzania.

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