History of the cod fishing industry across more than a millennium. The author begins with 10th century Viking and Basque explorers, and takes the reader on a roundabout journey right up to the modern era of global fishing moratoriums.
In some ways this book is all over the place, its narrative at times only loosely connected to the cod industry, sometimes not at all. But it's okay: just enjoy the ride and let the author share what he knows. Which turns out to be a pretty interesting history on a subject you'd never expect would be so interesting.
Each chapter has a postscript with one or two codfish recipes from a range of cultures and eras, some dating as far back as the 15th century. Once again it's more interesting than you'd expect: the preparation methods, the cuisine styles, even the recipe writing styles of these different eras. It adds an extra something to the book.
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The author writes capably, the story draws readers along, and we get quite a convenient review of world history in the bargain! This fish really does weave itself though centuries of history: as a dried/cured food, cod fed the early explorers on their long ocean journeys; as a highly profitable industry, codfishing played a role in the US independence movement; and thanks to the combined innovations of the steamship and flash-freezing, cod changed diets worldwide. Also note that Iceland plays a surprisingly oversize role in this book as it skillfully used both diplomacy and a few highly creative forms of direct force to protect its fishing lanes.
One last thought on reading eclectically and randomly. This book was offhandedly mentioned in the book Capital Returns. And so a book on investing sent me to a book on fish, and this book, thanks to the various books its author mentions, will send me to a history of Jamaica and the novels of the Icelandic author Halldor Laxness. Let the book you're reading tell you what books to read next. You'll never find yourself in a reading rut, and the directed randomness helps you uncover insights and new ideas in ways you normally wouldn't. Feel free to skim the brief "To Read" list at the very bottom of this post.
[Readers, feel free to stop reading right here. As usual, what follows are just my notes and quotes from the text.]
Notes:
Prologue: Sentry on the Headlands
1ff On cod overfishing, on Canada's fishing moratorium, putting fishermen on welfare, on pressure to reopen groundfishing; on the absence of cod today when you used to be able to catch them easily in simple traps close to shore. Commercial fishermen using bottom dragger techniques eliminated most of the fish, the fishermen the author writes about here are catching cod to measure and tag them, then throwing the back. The people here "are at the wrong end of a 1,000-year fishing spree."
Part One: A Fish Tale
Chapter 1: The Race to Codlandia
17ff On Basque and Viking seafarers who traveled with salted cod; on Leif Erickson who likely traveled as far as Labrador; on Jacques Cartier, who arrived another six centuries later, finding the land rocky and barren. On Vikings discovering a process to cure cod by drying it, the Basques by salting first and then drying it, the longer lasting food enabled even more distant sea travel. When dried salted cod is soaked, it becomes flaky and delicious, even better than fresh cod, and "cheap high quality nutrition."
26ff On the Hanseatic League, a multinational organization dating from the 13th century that managed the mouths of major rivers in Europe and thereby controlled much of European trade, especially in the Baltic region. English League members were called Easterlings and this is the root for the word "sterling": something of assured value [cute little trivia blurb right there]. Note also comments here on anti-immigrant sentiment as early as 1381 as the League's later abusive trade monopolies got out of hand: "mobs rose up in England and hunted down Hanseatics, killing anyone who could not say bread and cheese with an English accent."
27ff There's a story here about fishermen who discovered a new fishing location for cod and it's plausible that this involved discovering America before Columbus--but fishermen always keep secret the best fishing locations. Officially John Cabot (an Italian actually: Giovanni Kabuto) who sailed for Henry VII found the North American Atlantic Coast, which he named "New Found Land" in 1497. "Thirty-seven years later, Jacques Cartier arrived, was credited with "discovering" the mouth of the St. Lawrence, planting a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula, and claimed it for France. Cartier also noted the presence of 1,000 Basque fishing vessels. But the masks, wanting to keep a good secret, had never claimed it for anyone." [Although the author doesn't mention this directly, but it's interesting to consider the gigantic difference between a nation like France that can claim territory (and enforce such a claim with a military), and a people like the Basques that didn't and couldn't.]
Chapter 2: With Mouth Wide Open
32ff On the codfish itself, Gadus morhua: cod is fecund, impervious to disease, eats anything "including young cod," it doesn't fight when you fish it, you just haul it up; on cod being 18% protein, high even for a fish; and when dried the protein content rises up to 80%. You can eat nearly all of it.
35ff On the unknown origins of the word cod: sexual connotations of it, also the codpiece; in Spain, "lo que corta el bacalao" (he who cuts the cod) is the person in charge.
37ff On the taxonomy: 10 families of some 200 species of cod; five types are commercially fished: pollock, haddock, Atlantic cod, whiting and hake. And then a sixth kind which less well-regarded: the Pacific cod. Funny quote here on Icelanders who prefer to eat haddock and rarely eat cod, "we don't eat money."
Chapter 3: The Cod Rush
50ff John Cabot returns triumphantly to England after his voyage to the New World, he disappears on his second voyage. Various factoids here on how by the early 1500s significant amounts of salt cod from Newfoundland were sold in Europe in various ports; on the French dominating the Newfoundland cod fishing trade, while English fisherman essentially abandoned Newfoundland for the waters around Iceland, where they developed major fishing activity there by the mid 1500s; on salt, making it, using it, different ways to salt cod, etc. "Wich is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'a place that has salt' and all the English towns whose names and in wich were at one time salt producers."
58ff On Newfoundland cod becoming far more important to England by the 16th century because the cod was used in salted form to feed sailors on their ships-of-the-line; also the Navy/British government sold the surplus; gradually England liberalized its commercial fishing industry and began allowing English fishermen to sell directly to foreign ports; note that all of this was soon to be overwhelmed when, early in the 17th century, a small group of dissident religious immigrants fled England and arrived at [what would come to be named] Cape Cod.
Chapter 4: 1620: The Rock and the Cod
63ff On all of the European explorers well-provisioned with salted/cured cod, most of them were fruitlessly searching for a westward sea route to China; on Giovanni da Verrazano finding Cape Cod long before it was named this, calling it "Pallavicino"; and then on Bartholomew Gosnold finding Pallavicino all over again some 75 years later, this time naming it Cape Cod because he was literally being pestered by these fish. [Edit geekery note: there's a repeated typo here, the author spells Pallavicino incorrectly, writing Pallavisino, and he does it several times here.] On John Smith mapping New England's coasts and harbors; and then on the pilgrims asking England for a land grant for a colony there; the pilgrims foolishly arrived in the winter [!] and also knew nothing about fishing; worse the pilgrims couldn't farm or hunt. Gradually they became fishermen whether they liked it or not. Finally a discussion of how the Boston and Massachusetts coastal area "drained off" much of the population from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia as the Massachusetts economy became a diversified trade center, even beginning to spread westward for agricultural land.
76ff Note the postscript to this chapter: a chowder recipe from Daniel Webster [!] followed by a quote from Webster: "Such a dish, smoked hot, placed before you, after a long morning spent in exhilarating sport, will make you no longer envy the gods." [That's a quote worth filing away and stealing.]
Chapter 5: Certain Inalienable Rights
79ff On Boston building significant wealth on the cod industry and producing a new wealthy class; but also on the use of cod in the slave industry; in the Caribbean for example cod served as a cheap, storable and transportable protein source where the industry could sell the lowest quality product.
83 The author makes extra sure to remind the reader that even though the Boston cod merchants weren't directly involved in slave trading they were involved in an ancillary way, by providing Caribbean planters with "cheap food to keep enslaved people working sixteen hours a day." [This seems completely incontinent: what should they have done: not provide food? Ever more incontinently, in the next chapter the author writes about how there was a famine in the British West Indies after the British blocked Boston/New England fishermen from selling cod to those markets! Damned if you do, damned if you don't.]
83ff On the innovation of the Gloucester schooner, a faster ship with better rigging that revolutionized sailing and fishing; rolled out in 1713; a brief discussion of France's dwindling control of fishing territory in Newfoundland as the Seven Years' War/French and Indian War brewed; even a blurb here about Montcalm and Wolfe fighting it out in Quebec City; on England's Trade and Navigation Acts which limited the American colonies trade to only with England, despite the fact that New England produced way too much cod just for the British market; New England continue to trade elsewhere, ignoring the British constraints, but then in 1733 the Crown decided to regulate molasses as a step towards reasserting control over the colonies; this "turned out to be one of the first inadvertent steps toward dismantling the British Empire." [Good sentence: this could be right out of Correlli Barnett's The Collapse of British Power.]
Chapter 6: A Cod War Heard 'Round the World
93ff On the New Englanders wanting to make their own decisions about their own economy; on the 1733 Molasses Act, then a generation later the Sugar Act of 1760 which taxed molasses once again; the 1765 Stamp Act; then the British began stepping up direct enforcement of trade laws; other baffling British moves that antagonized/enraged the colonies even more: for example shutting down Boston Harbor in 1774; then the Restraining Act of 1775 which restrained New England trade to English ports and barred New England fishermen from the Grand Banks [the issue of fishing rights wouldn't really be settled out for 200 years, the USA would still be arguing it out with Canada many years later.]
102ff The author makes an abrupt topic change here; now discussing poor cod quality from the Americas; Mediterranean cod buyers began buying from Scandinavian cod suppliers with higher quality fish. Then to the market growth due to the US Civil War. [? I am not following the author's thread here. This chapter could use more scope control.]
Part Two: Limits
Chapter 7: A Few New Ideas Versus Nine Million Eggs
111ff On the various risks of fishing cod, losing fingers to frostbite, the unique risks of the doreymen: men sent out into one- or two-man boats to catch fish before reuniting with the mother ship; doreymen were often lost or drowned or frozen; on dorey heroics and survival stories here too; nowadays men injured on fishing ships are crushed by the ship's machinery; "Fisherman have the highest fatal accident rate of any type of worker in North Atlantic countries."
118ff Now another abrupt topic shift to 1815 and the French effort to modernize their fishing industry; they found it cheaper to subsidize cod fleets (which produced excellent sailors) than to maintain a large standing navy; even the British copied this model eventually; on longline fishing used by the French: lines up to 4-5 miles long, doreymen would work up the line in teams, unhooking fish and rebaiting the hooks.
122ff Now on to overfishing: on Thomas Henry Huxley playing a major role on an 1862 commission which was to examine complaints from driftnet herring fisherman who claimed that longliners were diminishing the catches; he declared these claims to be unscientific and said the industry should be looking for more productivity rather than less. The author claims Huxley's influence was reflected in government policy for the next 100 years.
124ff On the use of gillnetting, nets anchored slightly above the ocean floor, fish swim through the netting and are trapped at the gills; no bait is required so the method is much cheaper. Next was the rollout of steam engines, enabling ships big enough to have space for onboard fish processing. Next to come would be large-scale food freezing: these two inventions together would radically change commercial fishing.
Chapter 8: The Last Two Ideas
127ff [Note the title of this chapter: it's (I think) an ironic reference to the two innovations that were to eventually kill fishing, in the sense that they led to overfishing on a global scale.] On the introduction of steam power and freezing to cod fishing; first however a discussion on how fishermen from many countries continued to fish with sail power, in some cases well into the 20th century. On how many fishing innovations came from Europe first because it was the most competitive fishing environment; on bottom dragger nets, which were feasible once ships had engine power; on the otter trawl, which ran on rollers and was the prototype of all modern bottom draggers. The scale of fishing increased with engine power, as catches would be six times what sail ships could produce. Also these huge catches also would cause fish prices to crash, "creating unprecedented havoc in the marketplace." [Note that this should reduce the aggregate capacity of the fishing industry]. Later on the innovation of diesel engines which were even more efficient.
134ff On Clarence Birdseye and his innovations in freezing foods, he developed this in Labrador, outdoors [tells you something about the weather up there...]. Soon he was bought out by the Postum Company, which was renamed General Foods. Clarence Birdseye went on to do a bunch of other things actually: innovating his food-freezing techniques with a quick-drying process; also founding an electrical company, even improving the light bulb [it's probably worth reading more about Birdseye]. The fish and food freezing innovation "came at a critical moment in the cod fisheries."
137 Interesting blurb here on the 1920s when a huge order of salted cod, more than $1 million worth, was on its way to Italy right when Mussolini came to power. When the ship arrived its cargo was confiscated and never paid for. The author doesn't go into too much detail but this actually caused Glouster, Massachusetts' most established seafood company Gorton's to abandon the saltfish trade. [Odd that the author kind of leaves this tidbit hanging without more context.]
137ff On filleting machinery introduced in the 1920s in New England, where fish waste would be sold off to fish meal factories; also freezing and filleting were combined to make "fish fillets" which became a thing; also on the neologism "scrod" which became a household word for a small cod fillet. Note that sometimes the fish was haddock and the distinction became less and less clear over time. Today if you buy a fish stick the author claims it's likely to be Pacific Pollock. Also on the enormous commercial success of "fish sticks." [One can't help but think of Kanye].
138ff On how fish freezing changed the entire relationship between seafood companies and fishing ports: once fish was frozen it could be brought anywhere; and fish that was going to be frozen could also be bought anywhere. Thus see how the Glouster, MA port's market share declined during this incredible growth period in the mid 20th century.
139ff Also on the development of the huge "factory ship" combining high-powered ships with bottom dragger nets as well as fish freezing equipment all on one ship. Also on the development of the stern trawler which was more stable on rough seas and could haul in even more fish, while providing a large open deck space where the fish could be processed and frozen. The 1950s was "a time now thought of as the golden age of long distance net trawling" where cod catches were larger every year. On other innovations like the rockhopper: putting the trawler/dragger net on discs that would hop up when they hit a rock, making it possible to drag close to the bottom without damage to the net; also "tickler chains" which would stir up the ocean sea floor and would be like beating the bushes to get even more fish. Also on sonar or spotter aircraft, techniques that made obsolete fishermen's old methods of finding good fishing zones.
Chapter 9: Iceland Discovers the Finite Universe
144ff Beginning in 1902 the British government "began to concede that there was such a thing as overfishing"; on Iceland clinging more to traditional fishing techniques, also on how Iceland mostly lost contact with the outside world in the 16th century [Wait, how could this be possible: the author also on p147 that no trees grow in the island (except a few ornamental ones) and there is no fruit and there is no grain: how can Iceland possibly lose contact with the outside world and survive?] On disputes over fishing the waters off of Iceland, starting with the French in the 18th century and then the British in the late 19th century.
149ff [An interesting quote here that if carried further takes you to some intriguing conclusions, also it teaches some aspects of rhetoric.] The quote pertains to a debate in Iceland as the new British mechanized trawlers started to overrun Iceland's coastal fishing zones. "The Icelanders had two opinions about this. Some wanted all foreigners to be banned. But others thought that Iceland should get some of these monster ships itself, so it could reap the profits of its own ocean. The second argument one. It generally does." [Worth parsing this because the author frames up extreme poles of debate here, "foreigners banned" versus "depleting the ocean with monster ships" as if these are the options. Also it's interesting to think about how mass immigration/emigration is often inextricably tied in with world trade: the more goods and services move around the world, the more labor forces become mobile, moving around the world. It's interesting to think about how there may perhaps be levels to things that are healthy--and levels to things that are unhealthy.]
150ff On how the early fishing technology adopters in Iceland became Iceland's first capitalists: cod created an new entrepreneurial class in Iceland just the way it had in New England; Iceland was also evolving from a subsistence peasant economy into something modernized. The author discusses a "reawakening" of Iceland's intellectual life that followed.
152 Note that the onset of World War I caused the British government to commandeer all fishing ships for military use: this produced a four-year respite from British fishing in Iceland's waters; thus catches went up for Iceland's fishermen; then after the war, the British returned. [Interesting to think about what is the "recovery time" for fishing catches, is it as short as a few years? The author will discuss some of the nuances on this issue in the coming pages.] Also comments here on British fishing trawlers by the 1930s were already using wireless, electricity, echometers (a forerunner technology of sonar); the author decries how it now requires lots of capital to fish cod, how it was nothing like back in the old days when a middle-class self-made entrepreneurs in New England could make it big fishing. [I think a reader here can detect certain patterns that happen in all industries as they evolve from nascency, to later becoming professionalized, to still later becoming scaled up and oligopolized; Recall how Jobs and Woz or (Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard) started out in their garages but ultimately these become billion dollar companies with tremendous barriers to entry.]
154ff On World War II causing, once again, all British fishermen ships to be requisitioned for military use; the Allies occupied Iceland, but because Britain had no fishing fleet, Iceland became the only major fishing nation of Northern Europe for some six years. [And now another random topic shift without warning]: the author jumps to discussing the British demand for cod liver oil, this is a secondary cod market that Iceland dominated. On Iceland negotiating independence from Denmark in 1944; the author writes: "Because of cod, [Iceland] had moved in one generation from a fifteenth century colonial society to a modern post-war nation." Finally, a quote here from W.H. Auden, who met up with his former Icelandic guide in the 1960s after spending extended time there in the 1930s. Auden asked him what life had been like during the war, and the schoolmaster replied, "We made money."
Chapter 10: Three Wars to Close the Open Sea
158ff The author notes that after World War II ended, fish stocks after six years of very little fishing "were at a level that has never been seen since." [Absolutely fascinating that the one thing that got left alone during the world's worst war were fish stocks--you can always find something that's convex to something!]
159 Mention here of Halldor Laxness, who wrote about the harsh life of pre-war Iceland and who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1955.
159ff Some of Iceland's major nation-building steps during in the 20th century included extending its territorial limit to 4 miles offshore: this is not a big deal now, but it was a major move in 1950; comments here on the 1940s when the United States wanted to protect its offshore oil production; on Harry Truman issued a proclamation that the United States had the right to control mineral resources on its continental shelf, this was a new concept in international law. "No one had ever owned a continental shelf." At the same time Truman also issued a proclamation about conservation and protection of fishery resources and the establishment of conservation zones in the high seas contiguous to the coasts.
161ff Note that after 1954 Iceland's cod catches began to fall dramatically; in 1958 Iceland extended its territorial limit to 12 miles offshore; this was formally protested by the British government: the British press labeled this the "Cod Wars." In 1961 Britain recognized the 12 mile limit, then in 1971 the same thing happened all over again as Iceland extended its coastal limits to 50 miles and Britain (as well as West Germany this time) vehemently protested.
164ff On a new weapon used in the "second" Cod War, in the 1970s: the Icelandic Coast guard would cross a foreign fishing vessel's path and use a secret weapon: a trawl wire cutter. "A trawler without a trawl had nothing to do but go home. During the one-year conflict, eighty-four trawlers--sixty-nine British and fifteen German--lost their nets." [Very interesting to see some of the techniques that Iceland used here--both diplomatic as well as using various forms of force here]: occasionally Iceland would ram a foreign ship, Iceland would not allow injured or sick British sailors into Iceland unless they arrived on their own vessel (which would then would be seized), and so on. Note also that Iceland was allied with England as part of NATO but then Iceland would block NATO planes from Iceland Air traffic control zones; also Iceland even threatened to cut diplomatic relations [again, these are methods of force in various forms]; Iceland has more to lose here over protecting its fishing lanes because fishing was a huge part of its economy: England didn't have this level of dependency on fishing at all; also Iceland had more leverage in this conflict because NATO of course wanted to keep a "unified team" and so collectively NATO began pressuring Britain to back down; eventually Britain recognized the 50 mile zone. [Fascinating how a small and seemingly powerless country can find leverage in a dispute where it seems like there shouldn't be any leverage at all; some of that leverage has to occur in the form of actual physical force too: in this case using ships to cut trawler wires, or force fishing trawlers from a region, etc. the smaller country has to have balls but also it has to have creativity and has to game theory out the situation well. Usually you can do a lot more than you think! Note also the meta-idea that believing you can do more than you think is a self-fulfilling belief worth adopting no matter what the circumstances are, simply because it's self-fulfilling.]
166ff On smaller Nations making themselves heard more and more in the post-war world; on the idea of expanding national sovereignty into the ocean; on the concept of a 200 mile zone being floated in a 1973 meeting of the UN seabed committee. Iceland begins seeing declines in cod catches in the 1970s, also the average age of cod caught declines as well (indicating lower populations); Iceland then extends its conservation and sovereignty range out to 200 miles, once again the British and the Germans fought this, this led to the third Cod War, "the shortest and meanest of the three wars." Discussion here on "the arcane skill of friendly naval battles." Iceland severed diplomatic relations with Britain; West Germany struck a deal by exchanging redfish quotas as compensation for staying out of Icelandic waters; interesting quotes here from the Icelandic negotiator Jon Jonsson, he considered the British to be incredibly shortsighted: in fact he said to the British minister, "I am quite sure you are going to 200 miles in a few years, and then we will be able to advise you on how to do it." He was right, although the British never asked them their advice! [As an American I can see this kind of overconfidence and arrogance in my own culture, especially in my government, so I guess I'm shouldn't be surprised that it would be characteristic of English government culture also.]
171ff By 1976 most nations had declared their own 200 mile zones, this covered roughly 90% of the world's known fishing grounds; now fishing began to be following the laws of man rather than trying to catch as many fish as possible: fishermen had to learn now how to work regulations, not just have the skills of fishing itself. [We can think of international fishing zones as yet another example of the tragedy of the commons.] Comments here on thinking about "how to fish less" as a completely new paradigm; also an interesting stat here that even in Iceland by the 1990s fishermen were only 5% of the workforce.
Part Three: The Last Hunters
Chapter 11: Requiem for the Grand Banks
177 Interesting frontispiece here of two stanzas from William Carlos Williams' 1932 poem The Cod Head.
177ff The author takes the reader back to Newfoundland's Grand Banks fishing zone; on the parallels between Newfoundland and Iceland: basically terrible land quality, a short growing season, thus fishing is the basis for both economies; on both regions remaining underdeveloped until after World War II. Also in 1949 Newfoundland severed its ties to Britain and became a province of Canada [I had no idea about this.]
178 [Interesting and honestly a kind of depressing quote here]: "Once it became a province of a large wealthy nation, Newfoundlanders no longer needed to depend on their fishery for survival. Canada would make up the shortfalls. By the 1990s, the Canadian government was spending three dollars on fisheries for every one dollar those fisheries earned." [I'm sure there are lots of ways to look at this but you can't help but think about what it's like to become a client people of a welfare state system, and worse, that the cost to Canada of the welfare state efforts here are triple what Newfoundland's primary industry's profits were before. This is even more disturbing once you remember that the government taxes profits! The economic delta here is horrendous.]
178 Also interesting comments here about the history of Newfoundland leaving England and joining Canada: "In 1948, the British supervised a referendum by which Newfoundlanders voted by a narrow margin to become the tenth province of Canada." Note also comments here about how Canada wasn't really thinking about a distant province dominated by fishing: Canada was more interested in wheat and industrial products; Canada then tried to develop light industry in Newfoundland, but it flopped as it wasn't competitive in any way. [What's worse than becoming a welfare client of a distance central government? Becoming a welfare client of a distant central government that has no interest in you and is totally clueless about you.]
181 On the 200 mile limit not being a conservation measure, but rather a protectionist measure for each country's national fisheries.
184 Another interesting comment here about the sophistication of environmental campaigning--or in the case of the Newfoundland fishing industry, the lack of sophistication. one guy quoted here regretted not going after McDonald's, which was one of the biggest buyers of draggers' catch fishing, and then admiring the media successes of Greenpeace and their campaigns against whale and seal hunting, "We should have had a campaign against McDonald's. We weren't very sophisticated."
186 On the 1992 fishing moratorium on northern cod fishing, which put 30,000 fishermen out of work, and then a 1994 extension of the moratorium. All cod fisheries in Canada on the Atlantic were closed except for one in southwestern Nova Scotia with strict quotas placed on all other ground species. Canadian cod was "commercially extinct" although not yet "biologically extinct": it was no longer a commercially viable fish.
188ff Finally some imagery here of St John's in Newfoundland: no longer with a waterfront filled with stores selling supplies to European fishing fleets; instead the waterfront is full of bars, restaurants and shops for tourists, everywhere the constant theme of cod. [So now it looks like every other former fishing town, everywhere.] Comments here also on oil being discovered in the Grand Banks shelf; and yet still everyone talks of "when the cod comes back." The author concludes the chapter ominously: "But nature may have different plans."
Chapter 12: The Dangerous Waters of Nature's Resilience
191ff Debates on when or if the cod will come back, nobody knows. Decimated cod stocks have restored fairly quickly in other countries, see Norway for example which put in a moratorium in 1989, and stocks recovered by 1992, just three years later. The author praises Norway for its "courage" since it was willing to put people out of business; also that Norway acted early when there were still large spawners left; and because the government instituted the measure while cod fishing stock was still commercially viable; the author argues they were also lucky--these are the aggregate reasons the stocks came back, per the author. [Note that if you play this argument out you're basically giving the fishery regulator total power to put on moratoriums when there isn't an absence of fish! Or put differently, the nation-state gets to use its moratorium powers in the absence of evidence that fish stocks are low because it has to be "early"--before fish stocks get too low. Rather arbitrary.]
195ff On "farming" cod as well as salmon as a new industry [recall this book was published in 1997, quite a while ago; the company Stolt-Nielsen is running a large scale aquaculture farming program in the waters off of Norway at very large scale right now.] On various problems with farmed fish, salmon doesn't come out the right color, so they feed it dye; the fish farmers feed the fish pellets of pressed fish meal rather than wild bait fish because it's cheaper; also the fish grow much more rapidly, in some cases at double the rate of wild fish. The author also worries how farmed fish don't have the same genetic selection mechanisms that wild fish do, because they're "selected" by humans [this would seem logical: just like domesticated meat animals are genetically selected for by human influence]. The author also worries about if these fish were farmed in order to be released into the wild, they might not survive, much as is true with other animals born in captivity. Also logically incontinent thoughts here as the author quotes an oceanographer, Christopher Taggart (from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia), talking about how purebred dogs carry genetic defects like bad hips, and trying to make a point about how maladaptive traits in fish might be bred into wild populations. "If the dog [with bad hips] bred in the wild, you would produce a wolf population with bad hips." [Sometimes I'm astounded by the illogic of certain environmental academics! If you know your natural selection then you would know that nature would quickly deselect this trait right out of the gene pool. If something is adaptive, it is adaptive; if something is maladaptive, it is maladaptive. Bad hips are maladaptive.]
197ff Worries here on maintaining the genetic diversity of wild salmon populations, and concerns that they might be negatively influenced or contaminated by farmed species. [I often wonder what would happen if you plug this argument into the modern debate on large scale immigration. I think heads would explode...]
198ff Various worries and concerns about overfishing; on various fish populations which are in decline; on substituting Pacific fish for Atlantic fish, but note "the Pacific Cod is a different fish, its flesh less prized." Also comments about how marine ecologies are interwoven, such that other animals experience indirect problems due to overfishing or changes in the populations across a food chain.
200ff Disturbing anecdote here [disturbing on a few levels] about a 1964 environmental advocacy film depicting a seal being skinned alive, made by a Montreal film company called Artek, this stirred up the anger of animal lovers worldwide, even after it was discovered that the seal skinner had been paid by the film company and two of the other "hunters" turned out to be part of the film crew. [I never heard about this story.] On the 1983 Canadian seal hunting ban, despite the fact that seal hunting is a traditional as well as indigenous activity in Newfoundland, and then in 1995 the reopening of the seal hunt. Comments here on how the seal population exploded higher during the seal hunting moratorium, that seals eat enormous quantities of fish; that they are disliked by fishermen because they are wasteful: seals tear into the soft belly of the cod and leave most of the rest of the fish. Also on the smaller arctic cod which eats Atlantic cod eggs and larvae, this is a northerly species that seems to have expanded its range south as the Atlantic cod vanished. Other concerns that the cod has stopped migrating, that the cod is reproducing it much younger ages (which indicates its survival is at stake), etc. The author finishes this chapter lecturing the reader that "Newfoundlanders seem prepared to believe anything other than that they have killed off nature's bounty."
Chapter 13: Bracing for the Spanish Armada
207ff On threats to the survival of "true" fish and chips in Britain. On how some of the fish and chips shop owners switched to pollock, haddock or whiting, how they're giving up on English cod because it's too expensive; on how fishing quotas become political; on resentment towards the Spanish in England for their alleged overfishing; on phony or publicized conflicts between Canadians and Spanish, also over international fishing grounds. [You can't help but read this chapter and get awfully cynical about not just the underlying problems, but about the politicians addressing--actually not addressing--them. Most of it appears to be theater. Even the author seems to enjoy scoring virtue-signaling points here as he mocks the British underclass for their anti-Spanish xenophobia, and then he mocks the British for the alleged irony that the British were the ones who invented the super-trawlers that the Spanish are using to overfish. This chapter is really all over the place, it's the least interesting and the least readable so far.]
Chapter 14: Bracing for the Canadian Armada
219ff Still more discussion of sharp decline of fish stocks in the 1990s; an example here of the cod stock on Georges Bank down 40% from 1990 to 1994, which is why extremely tough restrictions were put through. [Once again it's interesting to read a book outside of its time period, this book is 28 years old now but the author constantly reminds us that fish stocks have never had such alarming declines, ever. It makes the reader wonder if things were so bad then, how could there even exist fish anywhere now? Which leads us to the perennial question on environmental books: why do they always default to alarmism and end-of-the-worldism? It's the same trick the media uses as well, and it's why everybody thinks the world is totally about to disintegrate and come to an end. Also note an asymmetry here, something I touched on above with Norway's fish moratorium in Chapter 12: if you get people more and more alarmed about something (by the way, it doesn't matter what: it can be fish stocks, or terrorism, or RussiaRussiaRussia!, whatever you need it to be), you can centralize more power and justify using that centralized power to "fix the problem." And then you win both ways: you can act "early" before the problem happens; if you don't act you can say something catastrophic will happen; and then if the problem resolves, you get to take credit for it. Maybe we can call this the centralist/environmentalist version of the old surgeon joke: better operate fast before the patient gets better!]
225ff The author relates various conversations he has with Gloucester-based fishermen and their fears that New England is over-regulating its fishermen, and then after all the fishing boats are scrapped the Canadians will "come down and take all their fish."
227-8 Interesting discussion here of the historical bad blood between Gloucester fishermen and Canadian government activity dating back to the French and Indian War and the US Revolution; also an interesting reference from the author that, now, all the Gloucester fishermen are descended from Sicilian, Greek and Spanish immigrants. [Fascinating to think about this: who really should be having bad blood with whom?] Then discussions of the various Sicilian-born families in Gloucester and what they're doing now that they can't fish anymore. The author asks: "Is it really over? ... Is this the last of wild food? Is our last physical tie to untamed nature to become an obscure delicacy like the occasional pheasant?" and then ominously concludes yet another chapter: "It is harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done."
A Cook's Tale [Recipes and Food History]
237ff [The remainder of this book is a collection of six centuries of cod recipes, ranging from how to "resuscitate" dried, cured saltfish by various soaking recipes (including soaking it in the elevated water tank of an old-fashioned toilet and flushing the water every hour), to recipes for cod's heads, to recipes for cod "spare parts" like fish tongues and cheeks, to cod roe recipes, to chowders, West Indian and West African recipes, French recipes as well as Basque recipes, etc.
266 Note the comment here on Providencia Trabal, famous in Puerto Rico for demonstrating traditional Puerto Rican cooking on television; see if you can maybe find a cookbook by her or about her! She sounds like she might be a proto-Daisy Martinez. [Note also if you spend some time googling her you fall down a rabbit hole and learn that Trabal was extensively surveilled by the FBI during her life as part of a countermovement to discredit anyone involved in the pro-PR independence movement. Jeez.]
To Read:
Samuel Eliot Morison: The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America
Maria Nugent: Lady Nugent's Journal: Jamaica One Hundred and Thirty Years Ago
W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice: Letters from Iceland
Halldor Laxness: Independent People [note that Laxness won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955]
Edmund Wilson: The Sixties
Daniel Boorstin: The Americas [3 vols]