Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [40]
But Joncas had a political agenda for making these assertions. He believed that the Canadian government, like that of France, should become more involved in financially supporting its fishing industry. In the decades since the French had introduced longlining, the technique had become widely used in Canadian fisheries. Joncas now argued in favor of gillnetting because it did not require the great quantity of bait needed for longlining. He pointed out that gillnetting was being used by Canada’s biggest competitor in the world cod market, Norway.
A gill net is a net anchored slightly above the ocean floor. It looks somewhat like a badminton net. Groundfish become caught in it and, trying to force their way through headfirst, end up being strangled at the gills. The nets are marked by buoys, and the fisherman has only to haul them up every day and remove the fish. But sometimes the nets detach from their moorings. As they drift around the ocean, they continue to catch fish until they become so weighted down that they sink to the ocean floor, where various creatures feast on the catch. When enough has been eaten, the net begins to float again, and the process continues, helped by the fact that, in the twentieth century, the gill net became almost invisible when hemp twine was replaced first by nylon and then by monofilament. Since monofilament is fairly indestructible, it is estimated that a modern “ghost net” may continue to fish on its own for as long as five years.
Joncas complained that the twenty- to thirty-foot schooners used in the Gaspé and the Prince Edward Islands were far too small to be competitive, and he recommended that the government help Canadian fishermen acquire large ships with deck space for onboard fish processing—what would one day be called “a factory ship.”
The solution to Joncas’s quest already existed. In midcentury, the steam engine had been invented, but fisheries were slow to seize on this machine. When they did, it would be the first new idea to dramatically change cod fishing since the discovery of North America. Soon there would be another idea: frozen food. Once these two inventions were put together, the entire nature of commercial fishing would change.
DELIGHTING IN HENCOD ROES
MR. LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS AND FOWLS. HE LIKED THICK GIB-LET SOUP, NUTTY GIZZARDS, A STUFFED ROAST HEART, LIVER SLICES FRIED WITH CRUSTCRUMBS, FRIED HENCOD’ S ROE.
—James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922
Leopold Bloom’s tastes were more old-fashioned than eccentric. Until recently, cod roe was the central feature of an Irish breakfast. Most Irish today do not eat cod roe for breakfast because, though they do not seem to realize it, what is called Irish breakfast is increasingly similar to English breakfast. In the old Irish breakfast, the roe was sliced in half and fried in bacon fat or simply boiled.
BOILED ROE
It is better to buy roe raw and cook it yourself. Do not choose too large a roe; the smaller ones have a more delicate flavour.
Wrap the roe in a piece of cheesecloth and put it into a warmed salted water. Let it cook very gently—the water should just bubble and no more—for at least 30 minutes. When cooked, take it out and let it get cold. The outer membrane is taken off before using, but leave it on until you use the roe, as it keeps it moist.
—Theodora FitzGibbon, A Taste of Ireland, 1968
Also see pages 247-49.
8: The Last Two Ideas
SAID HE, “UPON THIS DAINTY COD
HOW BRAVELY I SHALL SUP,”—
WHEN WHITER THAN THE TABLECLOTH,
A GHOST CAME RISING UP!
—Thomas Hood (1799-1845), “The Supper Superstition”
If a cod fisherman of Cabot’s day could have returned to work in the year 1900, he would have been dazzled by the new inventions on shore, but once he went to sea his job would have seemed familiar. When John Cabot’s voyage opened up North American