Nineteenth-Century Expansion of the Newfoundland Fishery for Atlantic Cod: An Exploration of Underlying Causes

• Main Authors: Cadigan, Sean T., Hutchings, Jeffrey A.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Liverpool University Press 2001
• Subjects: Newfoundland; atlantic cod
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9780973007312.003.0003

Sean T. Cadigan and Jeffrey A. Hutchings seek to answer why the Newfoundland Fishery expanded into waters off the Labrador coast. The factors they discover are a combination of the British strategy to boost imperial control; the need to utilise schooners otherwise idle outside of spring seal hunts; and, crucially, the ecological problems and declining catch rate of the inshore Newfoundland fishery, despire an increased fishing effort. They analyse extant literature, contemporary press accounts, and Newfoundland census data from 1845-1911 and conclude that the demographic growth of the area led to an ecological imbalance, which led to the investment in large schooners to travel further afield in search of cod.