# Have The Cod returned to the Grand banks?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-the-cod-returned-to-the-grand-banks/292453>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 1, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-the-cod-returned-to-the-grand-banks/292453 "2005-03-01T17:29:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-the-cod-returned-to-the-grand-banks/292453/1 "2005-03-01T17:29:41Z")

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The canadian government stopped all codfishing on the Grand Banks more than 10 years ago…this was because the population of fish had dropped precipitously.There were fears thatthe fishery would never revive.  
Well, has the cod population rebounded at all? or is this formerly rich fishing ground gone forever?  
You can still buy codfish-I understand that most of it comes from Iceland and Norway now.  
Could the Grand Banks cod stocks be rebuilt by transplanting fish from these other areas?

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-the-cod-returned-to-the-grand-banks/292453/2 "2005-03-01T18:31:26Z")

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Well, Greenpeace claims that there’s been little recovery:

> [@](#):
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> As warnings from nature go they don’t come much starker than the collapse of the Canadian cod fishery in Newfoundland due to overfishing. The cod, and thousands of jobs that depended on them, disappeared virtually overnight. Now because the cod stocks have failed to recover, seals are being blamed and hunted in record numbers.

[No cod? Blame the seals!](http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/features/details?item_id=754574) (Feb 24, 2005)

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**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-the-cod-returned-to-the-grand-banks/292453/3 "2005-03-02T05:34:38Z")

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The North Atlantic Fisheries Organization has published a quota for cod of 0 metric tons for cod in their area of regualtion. [Table of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) available here.](http://www.nafo.ca/info/Frames/InFrnews.html)

The Fisheries Resource Conservation Council recommends a TAC of 15,000 tons for cod in the 3Ps region of the Banks (westernmost, close to Canada). [Conservation recommendations published here.](http://www.frcc.ca/Press7.htm)

Compare this with the heyday of the Grand Banks cod fishery: 810,000 tons of cod taken in 1968 ([Cite here]([www.itdg.org/docs/region\_](http://www.itdg.org/docs/region_) south\_asia/aquatic-diversity.pdf)) and I think it’s safe to say that there has not been a population rebound in the time the fishery has been closed (since 1992).

There’s a sentinel fishery designed to monitor the cod populations by catching about 100 fish at a time (100 others are caught, tagged, and released), and the reports from that seem to be somewhat dismal. See Mark Kurlansky’s book _Cod_ for details.

Is the population permanently gone? No one knows what will happen, but we don’t seem to be able to predict it coming back anytime soon.

Could we transplant fish? The problem isn’t that there are no cod there: it’s that the cod that are there are too few, too young, and too dispersed for the population to return to what it was before. Transplanting fish on any feasible scale is not going to be enough to change this. It’s entirely possible that the ecosystem has shifted to a relatively stable state that would exclude cod, whose niche may now be occupied by other mid-level predators.