Publisher's Synopsis
While John Cabot′s landfall may be in dispute, what he discovered is not: cod–and lots of them... Historic accounts say that Cabot lowered a basket weighted with stones into the North Atlantic, then hauled it back up brimming with cod. The discovery of these fertile fishing grounds set of a centuries–long struggle among Basque, Portuguese, French, and English fishermen, and established a pattern of far–flung coastal settlements, called outports by Newfoundlanders, that ring the island. And so the legend fits today: the Grand Banks became Valhalla, a miraculous, self–sustaining Eight Wonder of the world, feeding the known world for 500 years. The catastrophic collapse of the fisheries, circa 1992, was unprecedente4d. An ecological disaster to rival any other–the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest notwithstanding–in modern history. This made–in–Canada plunder was part human greed, part stupidity, and part rapacity. Tarnishing Canada′s standing within the international community, it holds the reputation of Canada′s once–vaunted fisheries scientists up to ridicule. Sixteen years later, no one has taken accountability or apologized for the ruination of a centuries–old way of life and, taken accountability or apologized for the ruination of a centuries–old way of life and, more shocking, a stock recovery plan has yet to be produced... There can be no forgetting–or forgiving–such catastrophic pillaging, Sparked by a second wave of environmentalism focusing on the state of the world′s oceans, the Grand Banks cod collapse became a talking point, a sujet noir, now studied at universities and fisheries research centres, wherein students from around the world repeat this mantra: we must never allow our fisheries to go the way of the Grand Banks cod.
