Why Did Cod Fisheries Collapse According To 'Cod: A Biography Of The Fish That Changed The World'?

Reading 'Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World' was a real eye-opener about how humanity's greed and short-sightedness can destroy something that seemed endless. The collapse of cod fisheries wasn't just one thing going wrong - it was a perfect storm of disasters piling up over centuries. Early European fishermen hit the Newfoundland cod stocks hard starting in the 1500s, but the real damage came in the 20th century with factory trawlers that could scoop up entire schools of fish in one go. These massive ships had freezing technology that let them stay at sea for months, stripping the ocean bare.

What shocked me most was how governments and scientists completely missed the warning signs until it was too late. They kept setting quotas based on outdated data while ignoring local fishermen who saw the cod disappearing. The book shows how political pressure from the fishing industry led to disastrous decisions - Canada actually fired scientists who warned about overfishing. By the 1990s, cod populations had crashed so badly that Canada had to declare a moratorium, putting 30,000 people out of work overnight. The most heartbreaking part is how entire coastal communities that had depended on cod for 500 years just collapsed along with the fish stocks.

The book makes it clear this wasn't just about fishing technology - it was about human arrogance. We treated the ocean like an infinite resource that could never run out, ignoring basic ecological principles. Even now, decades after the collapse, cod stocks haven't fully recovered because we damaged the entire ecosystem. 'Cod' serves as this brilliant warning about what happens when economic interests override environmental reality, and how fragile even the most abundant natural resources can be.

As someone who grew up in a fishing family, 'Cod' hit me hard with its brutal honesty about the fishery collapse. The book nails how modern fishing became too efficient for its own good - those massive trawlers with sonar and nets the size of football fields vacuumed up cod faster than they could reproduce. What really struck me was how governments kept encouraging more fishing right up to the collapse, treating cod like some renewable paycheck instead of living creatures with limits. Local knowledge got ignored in favor of short-term profits, and now we've lost something that sustained generations. The worst part? We knew it was coming but refused to stop.