Listen to the science: Relying on collaboration and data collection to rescue Canada’s Northern cod fishery

Canada’s Northern cod fishery, off the north and east coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, was once one of the largest fisheries in the world, providing food, jobs, and a way of life for hundreds of years. But in the late 1980s, excessive levels of fishing, driven by new technologies and management errors, dangerously depleted the fishery. In 1992, the fishery collapsed completely, and the Canadian government instituted a nearly complete moratorium, with just a small amount of catch allowed for “sentinel” and “stewardship” fisheries.

A few years later, in the 1990s, as the stock showed some signs of recovery, a small fishery reopened based on some isolated observations of abundance in the inshore. However, further data revealed the stock was still below critical levels, and commercial fishing was halted again. The stock then stayed depleted, with little sign of recovery for over a decade.

By 2010, the population of cod again showed some signs of rebuilding. SFP began building a coalition of stakeholders who would commit funds and time to improve monitoring, strengthen the science to answer key questions, and reduce uncertainty.  We also wanted to ensure that the fishery would only open when it was in line with precautionary best practices. We found amazing local industry leaders who were already aligned with these aims and eager to see the fish stocks rebuild and the fishery reopen slowly and carefully, in line with the best possible science. After nearly 15 years of data collection, cooperation, and patience, these efforts paid off, and the Canadian government reopened the fishery in 2024.

Bringing stakeholders together

2010: SFP convenes a meeting of global whitefish industry CEOs and begins discussions with environmental NGOs in Canada and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Building off these discussions, stakeholders start developing a fishery improvement project (FIP) for Northern cod, marking the beginning of structured industry-led recovery efforts.

2011: SFP establishes the Northwest Atlantic Cod Supply Chain Roundtable (SR), bringing together major U.S. and Canadian buyers, processors, and suppliers of cod to monitor cod stocks and push for improvements. The SR tracks stock status, coordinates sustainability actions, and maintains buyer pressure for science-based management, aligning its industry members around the idea that any reopening should be tied to verified stock recovery. The SR is active until 2020, coordinating industry actions and tracking sustainability progress.

2019: The Northern Cod FIP, along with AGC and the Association of Seafood Producers (ASP) launches an initiative to tag and track cod in the fishery, to increase data and understanding about distribution, migration patterns, and genetics of the cod stock. SFP participates in oversight and coordination of the monitoring efforts and continues to work to align science and market expectations.

2019: Canada adopts a new Fisheries Act, which for the first time requires rebuilding plans for overfished stocks. Various domestic Canadian NGOs worked in a range of ways to support this outcome (SFP was not involved).

2021-23: The FIP scales up its research even further, deploying a world-class, large-scale monitoring system and expanding genetic and ecosystem studies. More than 1,000 cod are tagged as part of the survey project, which includes a 700-km acoustic detection array with 75 receiver stations. These multi-million-dollar investments significantly improve knowledge about stock structure and migration and contribute to improving the stock assessment.

2023: Canada adds older years of data to its analyses of the amount of adult fish needed to spawn above-average numbers of young fish (the “lower limit reference point” or LRP). The addition of this data fills key gaps and results in a lowering of the LRP which, together with assessment results showing the stock rebuilding, leads Canada’s DFO to move the Northern cod stock out of the “critical zone.”