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400+ yrs of salt-cod production for distant marketsSeasonal inshore fishing; ‘cod’ = ‘fish’ but dependent on diversified activities (salmon, seals, timber)By early 19th century, small-boat family ‘companies’ trading with merchants through ‘truck’ systema quintal of fish (112 pounds) was worth the same as a barrel of flour no matter how many fish were caught. Poverty and scarcity of material resources for coping & adaptationSocial Capital
Fisheries and the Culture of Outport Newfoundland • Fishery-dependent coastal communities • Isolation and few alternatives • Long histories, strong personal and community identification with fishing • Fishing at the center of culture • “The Commons” at land and at sea: major source of resilience • Open & equitable access • Local & limited control
Inshore fishing architecture and technologyJoe Batt’s Arm & Tilting, Fogo Island, 8/03
Event Ecology/History • “Failures” of inshore fishery late 60s • Out-migration, “the dole,” resettlement, cooperative • Intensification of fishing; • expansion into near-shore multi-species fisheries: “longliners” • Gill-nets; small mesh cod traps • Decline of subsistence activities • “ecological trap”
Events continue • 200 mile exclusive economic zone 1977 • Optimism and expansion; projected high level of MSY; high TACs • Science-based management • Declining inshore catches; • Intensification but also concern about science • NIFA and other challenges to DFO
Shift to snow crab (“supplementary” licensing of longliner fleets) • Small boat inshore fisheries scrambling---lumpfish, lobster, blackback flounder, capelin, squid; • Expanding capacity and mobility of small boat fleet: small longliners, for cod traps and nearshore gill-netting, crab pots. • Small longliners became large longliners as nearshore waters fished out…. • RESTRUCTURING, social, economic, political (and ecological?)