Cod’s Continuing Decline Linked to Warming Gulf of Maine Waters
By ERICA GOODEOCT. 29, 2015
Rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine contributed to the collapse of cod fishing in New England, and might help explain why the cod population has failed to recover, even though fishing has largely ceased, according to a new study.
But the quotas, the study’s authors say, were based on population estimates that did not take into account the temperature changes and therefore were set too high. Even when fishermen stayed within the quotas, they were in effect overfishing, the researchers write in their report, which appears in the Oct. 30 issue of the journal Science.
“The failure to consider temperature impacts on Gulf of Maine cod recruitment created unrealistic expectations for how large this stock can be and how quickly it can rebuild,” the researchers write.
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The article in “Science” documents the temperature rise in the Gulf of Maine very well. This is something fishermen and scientists are very aware of. I am sure this has not been good for codfish in the Gulf of Maine but it is impossible based on existing data to ascribe lack of cod in recent surveys specifically to temperature, over fishing, or faulty sampling. The article in fact actually says that. Perhaps all three are important but who knows how much to assign to what? The surveys started to show decreases in cod long ago, but they mushroomed when NOAA got a new survey ship and had trouble calibrating it. The temperature has been climbing for a long time but surveys just took a dive. A lot of other causes can be hypothesized. For example if shallow waters or particular locations are warming faster than others, perhaps the fish are concentrating in particularly cold spots and are being missed by surveys. Anyway, just the spread of south of the Cape species into the Gulf of Maine makes it clear that the water is warming, but how much cod loss to attribute to this is unclear.
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