The instructive story of the Newfoundland can: can all the fish end in the sea

Once large fishing vessels from many countries tried to get here, and it seemed that the fish would never end here. In a place called Newfoundland Bank, there was so much cod that sailors called it the kingdom of cod. But, alas: the once richest fishing region turned into an almost uninhabited place, since people have predatoryly consumed all the resources here.

Sometimes it seems to us that the fish resources of the World Ocean are something endless and that the fish in it will never end. Hooked fishing trawlers with huge nets daily catch a huge amount of fish in the ocean. But everything has a limit, and the history of the Newfoundland Bank is a vivid confirmation of this.

The Newfoundland Bank is a vast shallow shelf area off the coast of Newfoundland, southeast of it. The uniqueness of this place is that there are two large currents of the Atlantic Ocean. From the northwest, enveloping the continent, here from the polar latitudes come the cold waters of the Labrador Current, which are found in the warm southern Gulf Stream. This place is rather shallow, the prevailing depth does not exceed 100 meters, so the oncoming currents intensively mix the water column, and with it the nutrients. Due to their abundance, a high concentration of aquatic microorganisms and fish resources is observed here.

In this place, a huge population of Atlantic herring and Atlantic cod was noted. In addition, haddock, capelin, and lobster were plentiful. This unique place was discovered at the turn of the XV-XVI centuries by sailors from Spain and Portugal, and since then ships arrived at Newfoundland for abundant catch. Until the middle of the 20th century fishing boats came from all over the Atlantic, and the cost of overcoming the long path more than paid off with a generous catch. But after the advent of modern fishing vessels in the Newfoundland area of the bank, whose nets caught tons of fish at a time, the unique reserves of marine biological resources began to melt before our eyes.

At the end of the last century, Canada imposed severe restrictions on fishing along the entire east coast, since it was almost gone. The so-called cod crisis came, during which dozens of enterprises engaged in the fishing and processing of cod, one of the most valuable resources of the Newfoundland Bank, went bankrupt. But, despite the measures taken, today there is no abundance of fish in the once richest fishing region. Cod feeds on herring, and in order for the abundance of cod to reappear here, you must first restore the population of Atlantic herring. But here, not everything is so simple. Uncontrolled fishing has led to the fact that in the entire North Atlantic today you can observe a catastrophic decrease in the number of main commercial fish.

In the area of the Newfoundland Bank, warm and cold currents still occur, forming a layer of water filled with nutrients and microorganisms. But the ecosystem of this unique place, damaged as a result of overfishing, is unlikely to recover in the near future.