The Atlantic cod could be considered New England’s signature fish. Fishermen throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have targeted these brown bottom-dwellers for centuries, but over the last 30 years, their stocks have taken a nosedive thanks to overfishing and subsequent restrictive quotas.
Codfish stocks hit a historic low last year in New England, indicating that rebuilding efforts still have a long way to go. In 2021, commercial fishermen from Rhode Island to Maine reported catches of Atlantic codfish totaling about 50,000 pounds. That’s the lowest catch in recorded history and seems almost impossible given that in the 1990s fishermen from the same region were consistently reporting yearly catches in excess of 20 million pounds. It would seem to be an obvious conclusion that the catch rate was not sustainable, but local fishermen say that the tight quotas have made it impossible to catch cod at a rate that’s worth their time, effort and fuel, so many have moved on to other species like haddock and flounder.
These meager cod catches can’t even come close to meeting the demands of the U.S. market; in the 1980s, nationwide catches totaled over 100 million pounds annually, in 2020 that number only barley eclipsed 1% of that, at 1.2 million pounds. This has forced fish buyers to import cod from other countries like Iceland and Russia—with the recent ban on seafood imports from Russia, we can expect to see a price hike in cod, or maybe we’ll be seeing a new species lying next to our chips this summer. In either case, the stock rebuild is not achieving the projected results and that’s not good for anyone.
