Making Waves III

The following is reprinted, with permission, from a posting by Mr. Gus Etchegary on the Newfoundland History Buffs Facebook page. I have edited it lightly.  Mr Etchegary is one of the knowledgeable people I know on the subject of the decline of the Newfoundland fishery; this is a samll example of his compendious knowledge.

"Foreign overfishing started in 1953 (not 1970) with the arrival the largest fishing Armada ever assembled. By 1960, 1400 freezer trawlers and factory-freezer trawlers with 60,000 fishermen were fishing off the east coast, largely concentrated from Northern Labrador to the Grand Banks. Actually by 1971, foreign overfishing had such an effect that the catch-per-unit of effort was reduced from 1 ton an hour to 800 pounds in the same length and HP (horse power), side-trawler. Over the same period, the size of cod had been reduced from an average 4 pounds to 2.2. Gillnets (introduced in 1962) catch per 24 hours was reduced from 350/400 pounds to 40/50. It had such an negative effect that a group of 25 from the East coast made a special plea to the Trudeau Govt, in Ottawa on Oct 14th /1971, to take steps to stop foreign overfishing. The rest is history. The Govt of Canada had agreed, when we joined Confederation, to conservatively and sustainably manage our fishery. Instead the beneficiaries were foreigners. The fishery had been in decline since we joined Confederation and finally collapsed in 1992. Canada has done nothing since to rebuild the resource and as result we have lost 80,000 people and 15 000 jobs. All the talk we hear these days from Unions, Governments, Processors etc etc from Ottawa, St. John's and elsewhere about "renewing our fisheries" etc etc is pure, plain BS and means absolutely nothing other than delay matters until politicians are re-elected and they start all over again. In the meantime about 15 percent of present participants in the N&L fisheries are doing quite well and doing everything possible to make sure the once huge groundfisheries NEVER recover.They believe that groundfishery recovery means the end of crab and shrimp. That's a deliberate falsehood but a damned good excuse they conveniently provide the Harper Government from taking the time, money and effort required to rebuild what successive Canadian Govts have destroyed. The cause of the whole mess we have in rural N&L is a destroyed fishery under the Ottawa watch since 1949 and a leaderless N&L that wont stand up to Ottawa because of other priorities. We had better wake up and soon!!!!"


It's hard to follow that!