Fisheries Impacts on North Atlantic Ecosystems: Catch, Effort and National/Regional Data Sets
Spanish Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) Fisheries in Newfoundland in the Second Half of the 20th Century
Ernesto López Losa
Department of Economic History, The University ofthe Basque CountryAbstract
Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) has been an economically and culturally important food in Spain for hundreds of years. The Spanish cod fishery in Newfoundland waters developed slowly over time, and was sometimes erratic in its operation. The demand for dried salted cod was always high, and what was not caught by the Spanish fleet was imported. Fishery development accelerated after WW II, but the fleets then faced economic difficulties during the 1970s and 1980s. Catch levels of cod in the Northwest Atlantic declined during this time due to overfishing and a reduction in the number of boats in the fleet. Although cod has always been the target of the fishery, fishers in recent years have increasingly caught other species as well, especially with the introduction of freezer trawlers into the fleet. The demand for salted cod has remained high, however, despite the increasing importance of other target species and the growing competition with fresh fish. Although data sources in the Spanish fisheries often underestimate landings and rarely identify where fish were caught, Atlantic cod catch data taken from the Spanish Fishery Yearbooks fit closely with NAFO-FAO data. However, discards since the 1970s and nonreported catches may each represent up to 25% of the weight of cod landed. Thus, Spanish cod catches are probably substantially underestimated.