On July 2, 1992, Canada ordered the outright shutdown of North Atlantic cod fishing off Newfoundland, in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization zones 2J3KL. Within hours, about 30,000 people found themselves without work or income, in what historians still describe today as the most severe case of mass layoff in Canada’s history, affecting roughly 12% of the province’s active workforce. More than thirty years later, cod has never regained its former abundance, despite a timid revival of commercial fishing decided in 2024.
That day, five centuries of fishing collapsed in an instant.
The Grand Banks have drawn European fishers since around 1500: Basques, Bretons, Portuguese and English hunted cod there from generation to generation. For centuries, this activity remained artisanal, limited by the size of the dories and the strength of the arms. The advent of industrial trawling and factory freezer ships changes everything: the seabed is scraped relentlessly, season after season, never giving the stock time to recover. By the late 1960s, fishermen landed up to 800,000 tonnes of cod per year, a pace the resource could no longer sustain.
- On July 2, 1992, Canada closes the North Atlantic cod fishery, sending 30,000 people out of work overnight.
- Cod biomass fell by 93% in thirty years, dropping from 1.6 million tonnes to between 72,000 and 110,000 tonnes from 1962 to 1992.
- Thirty-two years later, commercial fishing reopened in 2024 with a quota of 18,000 tonnes, only 15% of the 1992 levels.
July 2, 1992, the day everything stopped
After decades of intensive overfishing, the reproductive biomass literally collapses. In just thirty years, it falls by about 93%, going from 1.6 million tonnes in 1962 to only 72,000–110,000 tonnes in 1992.
On July 2, 1992, the federal Minister of Fisheries, John Crosbie, announced a two-year moratorium on North Atlantic cod fishing in zones 2J3KL. The day before, confronted with outraged fishermen, he had uttered a line that became famous: “It’s not me who took all those damn fish!” The next day, the verdict still lands: no boat may haul North Atlantic cod.
Thirty thousand people plunged into unemployment overnight.
Fishermen, sailors, workers at processing plants: no one was spared in the coastal towns. The moratorium was meant to last two years; at the time, it was hoped that North Atlantic cod would rebound quickly. But the stocks did not rise a gram. A second, even broader moratorium swept across all Atlantic Canada in 2003.
Thirty-two years later, a reopening under tight surveillance
Ottawa eventually resolved to reopen carefully. The moratorium on commercial North Atlantic cod fishing was officially lifted on June 26, 2024.
The total allowable catch for the 2024 season stands at 18,000 tonnes for Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization divisions 2J3KL. It is nowhere near the pre-collapse levels: just a few months before the moratorium, in February 1992, annual catches still reached 120,000 tonnes. The coastal fleet absorbs most of this quota, taking about 84% of the total allowed, including 20% reserved for fishers in division 2J, versus 6% for the offshore fleet.
The stock remains fragile.
The Department of Fisheries now classifies North Atlantic cod as a “prudence zone,” meaning decisions must always prioritize stock recovery. Part of this status change results from a statistical recalculation: the reference threshold was lowered from 800,000 to 315,000 metric tonnes to move the stock from “critical zone” to “prudence zone.” The actual number of cod in the ocean, however, has not changed a single fish. On the ground, fishing remains marginal: coastal fishers caught cod for only about a dozen days in 2024.
The still-open wound
Outports, those coastal towns that had lived off cod for generations, never recovered as residents left to seek work elsewhere in Canada. Dozens of communities saw their populations shrink and never rebound. Cod, for its part, continues to swim far from the nets that once fed them.
In the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, zone 3Pn4RS remains completely closed to commercial fishing until 2029 in order to support the species’ recovery, still considered critically endangered. Three decades after the moratorium, North Atlantic cod has appeared only on quota papers, not in the depths of the Grand Banks.
Sources: lapresse.ca | pecheimpact.com
