Cod Read Free

since the late 1940s. Since the moratorium, environmentalists have singled out Petty Harbour for having taken this step decades before anyone else in Newfoundland was talking about conservation. In 1995, the Sierra Club, the conservation group, noted in its magazine: “More than a generation ago, Petty Harbour fishermen outlawed destructive practices like trawling and gillnetting. Petty Harbour allows only conservation-oriented fishing gear—old—fashioned handlines ... and traps.”
    But, in truth, the ban was implemented because with 125 fishermen working the opening of the same cove, there simply would not have been enough space for such practices. “Nowadays, everyone tries to say that it was for conservation,” says Sam. “There was no such thing as conservation. For God’s sake, there were enough fish to walk on. It was because there wasn’t enough room.”
    Newfoundland’s inshore fishermen fish only the waters of their own cove. If a Petty Harbour boat wanted to work beyond the last point of rock in Petty Harbour’s inlet, he would ask the St. John’s fishermen in the neighboring cove for permission. That was back in the days of civility, before the moratorium, when there were supposed to be enough fish for everyone, and religion was the only bone to fight over.
    Since the moratorium was declared, civility has been scarcer than cod. Six Petty Harbour boats even went gillnetting in plain view, and it took two years of legal action and political pressure to stop them.
    Commercially, Sam, Bernard, and Leonard do not fish together. Sam used to work with his brother. Bernard’s partner of twenty years never got a groundfishing license when they were easy to get. He hadn’t needed one. Now, if groundfishing ever opens up again, there will be a strict fish-per-license quota and no new licenses will be available. Bernard will have to share his quota with his partner, and it probably will not be a big enough catch for two. “And I’m supposed to tell the man I’ve been fishing with all these years, ‘Sorry, I have to team up with someone with a groundfishing license.’ They want to make people leave fishing. But what else is there?”
    â€œIt used to be a nice place to live,” says Sam, “but it’s not anymore.”
    â€œIt’s unbelievable,” says Bernard, “the way a few years ago everybody just did what they did, and they didn’t worry about anyone else. Now no one wants to see anyone make a dollar that they’re not making. Everybody is watching everybody else. I don’t think you can fart in the community without someone complaining.”
    But on this perfect Newfoundland September morning with a warming sun and a flat sea, these men of the Sentinel Fishery are in a good mood, doing the only thing they have ever wanted to do, going out on the water with their childhood friends to haul up fish.
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    The catch is a disaster.
    Newfoundland and Labrador cod, the so-called northern stock, are pretty fish with amber leopard spots on an olive green back, a white belly, and the long white, streamlining stripe between the belly and the spotted back. They are far prettier than the Icelandic stock, with its yellow on brown. The fishermen measure each cod as it is hauled in and find that the length ranges from forty-five to fifty-five centimeters (twenty inches or so), which means they are two- or three-year-old codlings born since the moratorium—not even old enough to reproduce. When Leonard finally hauls up a cod of seventy-five centimeters, probably seven years old, a typical catch ten years ago, they all joke, “Oh, my God, get the gaff! Give him a hand!”
    In their lilting brogues, they joke about the fact that they are not real fishermen anymore. The little boat hits a slight swell sideways, and as it rolls Sam whines, “Ohhh, I think I’m going to be seasick.” The others