In 1992, the Canadian cod fishing industry off the coast of Newfoundland collapsed. The
Prime Minister declared a ban on fishing in the region, destroying a multi-million dollar industry
and delivering a brutal blow to thousands of people that had been working in the industry. This
desperate measure was taken as a reaction to an even more desperate situation; if fishing in
the region continued as it had, much of the sea life was in serious danger of becoming extinct.
Over the past few decades, the northwest Atlantic ocean had become a powerful source of cod
fishing in Canada and around the world. The plentiful region had supported small subsistence
fishing for thousands of years, with coastal, family-owned firms never playing a very large role in
the global fishing industry outside of their local communities. However, in the 1970s the rise of
new deep-sea fishing techniques changed the landscape dramatically. New ocean trawlers with
nets several miles wide were capable of harvesting vast amounts of fish very efficiently, with
some even having on-board freezing facilities so that they could stay at sea for longer. The
fisheries in this part of the ocean were not given out as private lots, instead handled like hunting
grounds where the Canadian government would regulate the amount of fish that could be
harvested at a time. However, these regulations were fairly weak; companies often fished well
beyond the government quotas, and enforcement was spotty at best. While not a true
commons, the fisheries outside of Newfoundland were open enough that each firm, from smaller
local fishermen to international seafood behemoths, were in a race to claim their own share of
the ocean’s resources faster than their competitors. This led to a near-textbook example of the
Tragedy of the Commons; Each firm was incentivised only to maximize their own profit, with no
concern over the sustainability of their actions. Since the collapse led to the fishing ban in 1992,
cod populations have rebounded and fishing has tentatively reopened, but this example
illustrates a problem with resource harvesting in the absence of clear property rights.
Works Cited:
Mason, F. 2002 Dec 01. The Newfoundland Cod Stock Collapse: A Review and Analysis of
Social Factors. Electronic Green Journal [Internet]. [Cited 2019 Feb 21]; 1(17). Available
from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19p7z78s ISSN: 1076-7975