Description
The commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador used to be once probably the most successful on the earth. When it collapsed in 1992 – causing the largest single-day layoff in Canadian history and irrevocable ecological damage – fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as out of control harvesting and not taking fishermen’s concerns into consideration as likely culprits.
Examining the history of commercial cod fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador from the mid-nineteenth century to the aftermath of the cod moratorium, Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management used to be itself the issue. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were ostensibly managed by the state, and the fishery has still not recovered nearly 20 years later. Even though the collapse of northern cod raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to take note, predict, and keep watch over nature, their ultimate goal of keep watch over through management has not wavered – it has simply been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.