Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [61]
The constant theme of tourism was cod. White strips of peanut butter-filled hard candy were called codfish bones. Little wooden models of trawlers were sold. Bars offered an initiation to foreigners called “being screeched in.” This was a holdover from the cod and molasses trade, its meaning now lost. The tourist would down a shot of Screech, a Jamaican rum bottled in Newfoundland, and then would have to kiss a codfish—usually a stuffed one. There were no other codfish except frozen Russian fillets or the occasional catch from the Sentinel Fishery.
Meanwhile, oil has been found on the Grand Banks. A decade earlier, when oil was found on Georges Bank, fishermen had played an important role in blocking the oil companies. In Newfoundland, fishermen have already expressed concern about the effect on fish of the oil companies’ seismic soundings, but without an income, they do not represent a very strong lobby. “They say it [sounding] doesn’t affect fish, but theyCre lying,” said Lee.
Everyone talks of “when the cod comes back.” Lee said the fish plant would reopen when the cod came back. Tom Osbourne, procurement manager for National Sea Products in Arnold’s Cove, said, “Local fish will come back before too much longer, and we will go back to processing local fish. It will be king again someday. It will regain the U.S. market.”
Cabot Martin believes the cod will be back. “I’d rather there were fish to fight about. It’s all coming back. They will try. They will want to start dragging again. We will have to fight them again.”
But nature may have different plans.
SUNDAY IN NEWFOUNDLAND
SALTED COD SOUNDS
2 lbs cod sounds
4 strips salt pork
shelots or onions
Put about 2 lb. of salt cod sounds in water & let stand overnight, then drain off water. Put in a saucepan and cook for about 10 minutes. Drain. Fry pork, cut up shelots or onions, then cut sounds in small pieces and fry altogether. Add a little water if necessary.
This recipe was used some 80 years ago, and often, for Sunday evening meal with home made bread and butter. It was enough for the family and very tasty and delicious. Today, mashed potatoes, french frys, whole potatoes with green peas could be served with this dish.
—Winnifred Green, Hants Harbor, Newfoundland,
from Fat-back & Molasses: A Collection of Favourite
Old Recipes from Newfoundland & Labrador,
edited by Ivan F. Jesperson, St. John’s, 1974
Also see page 249.
12: The Dangerous Waters of Nature’s Resilience
WHAT WE GAIN IN HAKE, WE LOSE IN HERRING.
—English proverb
COD COMING BACK, FISHERMEN SAY
MINISTER UNDER PRESSURE TO END
MORATORIUMS IN WATERS OFF NEWFOUNDLAND
—front-page headline, Toronto Globe & Mail, October 5, 1996
Newfoundlanders debated over when “the cod was coming back.” Few dared ask if. Or what happens to the ocean if they don’t come back? Or whether commercial fishing was going to continue at all. The position that the cod would return was most candidly argued by Sam Lee: “They’re coming back because they have to.”
Scientists are not as certain. Ralph Mayo of the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, pointed out that there is no known formula to predict how many fish—or, in scientific language, what size biomass—are required to regenerate a population or how many years that might take. Both miracles and disasters occur in nature. In 1922, for unknown natural reasons, the Icelandic cod stock produced so many juveniles that, in spite of British and German trawlers, Iceland had a healthy-size stock for ten years. “There are lots of natural variables. All it takes is a huge winter storm to wash the larvae off the bank and away,” Mayo said. There is only one known calculation: “When you get to zero, it will produce zero.” How much above zero still produces zero is not known.
Fueling optimism is the