Who killed the grand banks?: the untold story behind the decimation of one of the world's greatest natural resources

While John Cabot's landfall may be in dispute, what he discovered is not: cod-and lots of them...Historic accounts say that Cabot lowered a basket weightedwith stones into the North Atlantic, then hauled it back up brimming with cod. The discovery of these fertile fishing grounds set of a centuries-long struggle among Basque, Portuguese, French, and English fishermen, and established apattern of far-flung coastal settlements, called outports by Newfoundlanders,that ring the island. And so the legend fits today: the Grand Banks became Valhalla, a miraculous, self-sustaining Eight Wonder of the world, feeding the known world for 500 years. The catastrophic collapse of the fisheries, circa 1992, was unprecedente4d. An ecological disaster to rival any other-the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest notwithstanding-in modern history. This made-in-Canada plunder was part human greed, part stupidity, and part rapacity. Tarnishing Canada's standing within the international community, it holds the reputation of Canada's once-vaunted fisheries scientists up to ridicule. Sixteen years later, no one has taken accountability or apologized for the ruination ofa centuries-old way of life and, taken accountability or apologized for the ruination of a centuries-old way of life and, more shocking, a stock recovery plan has yet to be produced. There can be no forgetting-or forgiving-such catastrophic pillaging, Sparked by a second wave of environmentalism focusing on the state of the world's oceans, the Grand Banks cod collapse became a talking point, a sujet noir, now studied at universities and fisheries research centres, wherein students from around the world repeat this mantra: we must never allow our fisheries to go the way of the Grand Banks cod. Alex Rose is a Vancouver-based writer and journalist who helped to write three Royal Commissions and Provincial Inquiries, including one on Canadian fisheries which resulted in changes to public policy. A contributor to the National Post Saturday Review, The Toronto Globe and Mail, and BC Business Magazine,he co-authored North of Cape Caution, an investigation of ecotourism opportunities on the British Columbia coast. His book, Nisga’a: People of the Nass River, won the 1993 Roderick Haig-Brown B. C. Book Prize and his essay, In Searchof Meaning, was shortlisted for Canada’s 2004 National Magazine Award. INDICE: Acknowledgements. Chapter 1. A Great English Ship Moored Near the Grand Banks. Chapter 2. The Cod: A Short History. Chapter 3. Botched Science and a Rebel Named Ransom. Chapter 4. Foreign Devils. Chapter 5. Draggers and Cod Death. Chapter 6. Federal Fisheries: A Sad and Ignoble Sputter into Inconsequentiality. Chapter 7. Death in the Outports: A Town called Fortune. Chapter 8. Requiem for the Beothuk. Chapter 9. Pacific Salmon: Going the Way of the Grand Banks Cod? Chapter 10. Offshore Oil IS the New Cod. Chapter 11. Peter Pearse, Rational Man, and the Prophet Daniel. Chapter 12. A Tale of Two Newfoundlands. Appendix: The Two-Hundred-Mile Fishing Limit. End Notes. Index.

• ISBN: 978-0-470-15387-1
• Editorial: John Wiley & Sons
• Encuadernacion: Cartoné
• Páginas: 203
• Fecha Publicación: 01/04/2008
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés