COD

Before Europeans settled in Newfoundland, the ships just followed the cod. Then it was brought ashore to be salted and dried in coastal villages founded for just that purpose. But history does repeat itself. Once again, fishing is mostly migratory, with countries sending massive factory-freezer trawlers around the world to harvest and process the catch at sea.

Newfoundland and Labrador's historic cod fisheries attracted local and international fishing fleets for almost five centuries before the Canadian government shut the industry down indefinitely in July 1992.

By then, once-plentiful fish stocks had dwindled to near extinction and officials feared they would disappear entirely if the fisheries remained open. The moratorium put about 30,000 people in the province out of work and ended a way of life that had endured for generations in many outport communities. It also made evident the vulnerability of marine resources to overexploitation and that existing regulatory regimes were insufficient to protect cod stocks.