For the first time in over 30 years, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Northern cod stock has been deemed “healthy” by Ottawa.
In June, Fisheries and Oceans Canada upgraded the cod stock’s status from “critical” to “healthy” and simultaneously increased the commercial quota for cod by 55 percent, to 59,000 tonnes a year.
Newfoundlanders say the move has left them hopeful, but also trepidatious after the devastating experience of a 32-year moratorium.
“This is the most hope we’ve had in Newfoundland for the cod fishery in years,” said Alberto Wareham, owner of Icewater Seafoods, a fish processing plant 150-kilometres west of St. John’s.
“[But] nobody wants to repeat what happened in 1992.”
Slow recovery
In 1992, Ottawa announced a wholesale moratorium on Northern cod following decades of overfishing.
The move led to around 30,000 job losses almost overnight — the largest layoff in Canadian history.
Barry Darby, a retired teacher and fisherman who has spent years researching sustainability models, says the suspension was initially supposed to be temporary.
“We thought by stopping fishing, [cod] would come back in a few years. And it didn’t,” he said.
Entire communities were abandoned, and Newfoundland came to serve as a global warning of the consequences of fishery mismanagement.
Darby, who is a seventh-generation fisherman, says Employment Insurance kept “the wolf from the door” of out-of-work harvesters.
“Communities started to look tidier, because there’s so many men who used to go fishing in the summertime. Now, they had time to sit around and paint their house … or mow the lawn,” Darby said.
Dwan Street, president of the Fish, Food & Allied Workers union, says she remembers the fish plant in her hometown of Port Union declining from about 1,000 employees pre-moratorium to 200 once it re-opened as a shrimp plant.
“The whole community just never recovered,” she said. “And I mean, we all have family and friends who grew up in Alberta, Toronto. That’s where they all went.”
Ultimately, it took until 2024 for Fisheries and Oceans Canada to end the moratorium. The department’s June announcement now bumps its quota up even further.
But the quota still reflects the government’s caution.
Harvesters are currently taking out about five to seven per cent of the annual stock, says Tyler Eddy, a research scientist at Memorial University’s Marine Institute in St. John’s.
This is actually well below the globally-recognized standard for sustainable fishing, of about 20 per cent, he says. This year’s total allowable catch of 59,000 tonnes also pales in comparison to the 266,000 limit in 1988.
Eddy does not think this year’s quota will affect the cod stock’s health.
“The stock is in the healthy zone, which gives you more confidence that you can increase the quota and the population is resilient to that increased number of fish you are removing,” he said.
A monumental rebuild
Stephen Ryan, a fisherman in the northeast region of Newfoundland, is one of the fishers hoping to capitalize on cod’s return.
Ryan, 38, has spent nearly his entire career focused on snow crab, a luxury good with high demand from Asian markets.
He is not alone. After the cod moratorium was imposed, snow crab became a mainstay of the industry. In 2025, snow crab sales in the province were $708 million, versus just $62 million for Northern cod.
But as Newfoundland’s waters warm due to climate change, researchers believe the prized snow crab will migrate north, making cod’s comeback well-timed.
With demand for cod booming, Ryan is excited for the future. “You’re not really fishing until your fishing cod,” he said.
Ryan has outfitted his 64-foot boat with an “auto-line” — a hook and line system that automatically catches cod. With this new equipment, he and his crew can catch up to 30,000 pounds of cod a day — about $46,500 in revenue — while limiting damage to the fish.
Wareham, of Icewater, expects many other fishers to make the same transition.
While cod is less lucrative than snow crab, it is much more predictable to fish when the stock is healthy, says Street, president of the FFAW union.
“Snow crab goes in cycles … we’re kind of avoiding those peaks and valleys that we see a lot when you just rely on snow crab,” said Street, whose father has fished snow crab and cod.
The rebound has also coincided with growing global demand for cod and declining stocks in countries like Norway and Iceland. This has helped drive up Northern cod prices, says Street.
“I spoke to the [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] Minister [Joanne Thompson] when she came out of Barcelona and she was like, ‘My God, everybody’s just talking [about] Canadian cod because it’s back,’” Street said.
“We’re a player again in the market and the demand is there.”
The Icewater plant, in Arnold’s Cove, was the only fish plant in North America to stay focused on cod after the moratorium, says Wareham. But even it changed its operations to process frozen cod from Norway and Iceland. Now, it is able to prioritize local catch again.
“We’ve waited 32 years for this to happen,” said Wareham, a seventh-generation fishery worker whose son will be the eighth.
With nearly 300 employees, his plant is by far the largest employer in the region.
And this summer has seen the highest total payroll yet, he says.
“We’ve had more cod available to us than we can produce,” he said.
Street says she hears of Newfoundlanders returning to the province, a potential boon to battered rural communities like her hometown of Port Union.
And unlike during the oil boom of the early 2000s, this time, it is to fish.
“We get inquiries now to the [union’s] certification board … all the time from folks who want to come back and fish.”
Inshore versus offshore
However, not all forms of cod fishing are eliciting enthusiasm.
This year, inshore harvesters were allocated 70 per cent of the quota, while offshore harvesters were allocated 20 per cent — up 10 per cent from the 2025 quota. Indigenous groups were allocated 10 per cent.
Offshore harvesters use much larger vessels than inshore boats, enabling them to navigate rough winter waters far from the coast. They also use a trawl system that has been heavily criticized by scientists and environmentalists, due to its indiscriminate catching of unintended species and destruction of the ocean floor.
Street says foreign bottom-trawling vessels were responsible for decimating the province’s cod population in the 1980s.
“None of us want to go back to the days where, you know, the Spanish trawlers were out there looking like a city,” she said.
“And it was the small boat inshore harvester that was sounding the alarm to say, ‘Guys, the fish are not there.”
Eddy, of Memorial University, says only two per cent of Newfoundland’s main offshore fishing region is affected by bottom trawlers. This may seem small, but if large amounts of cod are in the area, it could affect the stock’s spawning abilities.
“You could be catching way more than 2 per cent of the population if they’re all concentrated in that area,” he said.
In Eddy’s view, the important thing is to constantly monitor the stock’s size and spawning behaviour. He also notes that the offshore fleet provides winter employment in a highly seasonal industry.
“If it’s done sustainably and it’s well managed, I think there is room for both [inshore and offshore] especially when … the stock is increasing and it has been declared as in the healthy zone,” he said.
“You definitely want fish to be able to mature and reproduce a number of times before you catch them. Otherwise, you don’t have new young fish coming to the population.”
Helen Forsey, Barry Darby’s wife and co-researcher, says too much attention is paid to how much cod is caught, and not how they are caught. She believes offshore trawling threatens the health of the highly-productive females, which keep the stock thriving.
“A kilotonne of big, fertile, female codfish can keep a stock … growing for much longer than a kiloton of half-starved, smaller fish whose eggs are not as viable,” said Forsey, a longtime environmental activist who previously worked on Ontario agriculture policy.
Ryan, the cod fisher, says his biggest worry is the outsized lobbying influence of offshore trawlers.
“We’re not up in Ottawa,” he said.
Ryan fears the offshore industry’s return to Newfoundland could undermine the decades of hard work it took to bring cod back to healthy levels.
“Every year it seems the percentage is dropping [for inshore fishers] … we’re afraid we’re going down the same road,” he said.
“It’s the same old thing we done before … kinda makes you wonder if we learned anything or if we didn’t.”
Street notes the relationship between inshore harvesters and Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been strained ever since the moratorium. But she believes progress has been made since Minister Thompson, a Newfoundlander, came into office last year.
“It really does seem like the willingness is there to … make decisions closer to the water,” she said. “When we’re frustrated, she picks up the phone.”
Great to see the cod stocks on the rise. Great to see that the economy of small communities will benefit from this. But that will only last until Canada decides that to let foreign factory freezer trawlers back in and then we will go thru it all again.
It boggles the mind that trawler are allowed to fish at all. Considering the damage to the spawning grounds and the by catch waste generated by this ill conceived fishing method, it seems mindless to do anything other than beach these vessels.