Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, three fishermen take their skiff out to sea. Sam Lee, Leonard Stack, and Bernard Chafe work with Sentinel Fishery, the only legal cod fishery in Newfoundland since the 1992 Canadian government moratorium, which bans groundfishing in Newfoundland waters. Now Sam Lee and his partners, all out-of-work fishermen from Petty Harbour, earn a small wage for studying the depleted cod stock. The men tag and release as many cod as they can. Fishermen on another boat “catch exactly 100 fish, open them up to see if they are male or female, and remove a tiny bone from the head” (4) which tells its age. The fishermen and scientists hope to monitor the progress of the local cod stock.

Petty Harbour is the closest North American town to Ireland across the Atlantic. Its 5th-generation Irish-immigrant residents still speak in an Irish brogue in a town split between Catholics and Protestants. For generations, the primary source of income in Petty Harbor was cod, which they caught in the summer using traps, and in the winter using handlining. More aggressive and wasteful fishing techniques, such as

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