University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Sociology Scholarship Sociology Winter 2001 Outport adaptations: Social indicators through Newfoundland's Cod crisis Lawrence C. Hamilton University of New Hampshire, [email protected] melissa J. Butler University of New Hampshire - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/soc_facpub Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Hamilton, L.C., Butler, M.J. Outport adaptations: Social indicators through Newfoundland's Cod crisis. (2001) Human Ecology Review, 8 (2), pp. 1-11. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Scholarship by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Research in Human Ecology Outport Adaptations: Social Indicators through Newfoundland’s Cod Crisis Lawrence C. Hamilton and Melissa J. Butler Sociology Department University of New Hampshire Durham, NH 03824 USA1 Abstract 1988; Candow and Corbin 1997). During those centuries, fishing technology and effort increased slowly, having incre- The 1992 moratorium on fishing for Northern Cod mental and hard-to-perceive effects on the resource (Hutch- marked a symbolic end to the way of life that had sustained ings and Myers 1995). In the decades after World War II, Newfoundland’s outports for hundreds of years. It also however, technology and effort leaped forward. The Northern marked the completion of an ecological regime shift, from an Cod came under new pressure from industrialized trawler ocean ecosystem dominated by cod and other predatory fleets. Canada’s 1976 declaration of a 200-mile economic groundfish, to one in which such fish are comparatively exclusion zone (EEZ) sharply cut back fishing by foreign scarce, and lower-trophic-level invertebrates more common. fleets, but Canadian domestic capacity soon built up to com- We examine patterns of change seen in large-scale social pensate. Signs of depletion were noticeable, but not yet offi- indicators, which reflect the smaller-scale adaptations of cially acknowledged, in the late 1980s (Chantraine 1993; individuals and communities during this ecological shift. Finlayson 1994). By 1992, as Northern Cod biomass fell to Trends in population, migration, age, unemployment and one percent of its earlier level, a crisis was undeniable. dependency suggest declining conditions in rural Facing ecological collapse on a historically unprecedented Newfoundland over the years of fisheries troubles. The 1992 scale, the government declared a moratorium on fishing for crisis accelerated previous trends, but did not produce great the Northern Cod. discontinuities. Some trends date instead to the late-1980s It was soon apparent that this collapse involved more resource-depletion phase that ended the “glory years” of than the Northern Cod. Cod resources off Nova Scotia, New Newfoundland’s groundfish boom. Government interventions England, Greenland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence also meant to soften the economic impact of the 1992 crisis also were dangerously depleted by the early 1990s (Boreman et al. blunted its social impacts, effectively postponing or distribut- 1997). Populations of other fish species — some valued by ing these over a number of subsequent years. Outport soci- commercial fisheries, and others taken unintentionally as ety is adapting to shifts in the regulatory and global-market bycatch — fell in many areas as well (Hamilton, Duncan and environment, as well as changing marine ecology. Adaptive Haedrich 2001). Northeastern Atlantic fisheries, including strategies include new investments in invertebrate fisheries, those of Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands, had experi- changes in education and migration, and continuing reliance enced their own crises in groundfish resources during the late on the informal economy. 1980s or early 1990s (Hannesson 1996; Hamilton and Haedrich 1999). In Newfoundland’s case, however, the fall Keywords: Newfoundland, fisheries, social indicators, from abundance to commercial extinction was most pro- population, migration, cod crisis, dependency found. In the years since the Northern Cod moratorium, there has been little evidence of recovery (Lilly et al. 2000), and Introduction recovery appears unlikely at present levels of fishing (Haedrich and Hamilton 2000). The Northern Cod, an Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) On land, the Northern Cod moratorium affected tens of population inhabiting the continental shelf off Newfound- thousands of Newfoundland workers, and undermined hun- land’s east and northeast coasts, historically has been among dreds of coastal communities (Candow and Corbin 1997; the world’s richest fishery resources. This resource support- Palmer and Sinclair 1997; Harris 1998). There were dire ed European settlement of North America (Innis 1978; warnings about the social consequences, but government Kurlansky 1997), and shaped society on the island of New- interventions softened these — initially, providing income foundland itself for five hundred years (Sider 1986; Sinclair assistance through the $484 million Northern Cod Adjust- Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 1 © Society for Human Ecology Hamilton and Butler ment and Recovery Program (NCARP), followed in 1994 by The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy (TAGS) with an allocation of $1.9 billion. As TAGS expired in 1998, a further $730 mil- lion package was announced to assist with retraining and restructuring adjustments for workers displaced by the down- sizing fishery. The benefits of TAGS and other supports, dis- tributed unevenly among outport residents, created new in- equalities and social divisions. Although groundfish have not returned to their earlier abundance, alternative species have become the new main- stays of Newfoundland fishing. These alternatives — princi- pally invertebrates such as crab and shrimp — currently yield catches comparable in value to the former cod fishery. In- come from the alternative fisheries is distributed differently, however. It does not necessarily benefit the same people, enterprises or places that formerly were supported by cod. In this paper, we examine some of the social changes occurring in Newfoundland through the Northern Cod mora- torium. Comparisons of social indicators across five New- foundland regions provide a large-scale perspective on this period, and show the crisis aftermath in the context of earlier trends. Finer-scale perspectives help to interpret these trends. From Cod to Crustaceans In 1991, 45% of Newfoundland’s 568,000 people lived on the Avalon Peninsula, many of them around the capital city of St. John’s (Figure 1). Away from St. John’s, New- foundland’s population is dispersed among a handful of Figure 1. The island of Newfoundland, showing locations of the five smaller regional centers, and hundreds of coastal towns or regions compared, and the home of the Northern Cod. villages called outports. Most outports had been settled ini- tially for cod fishing. Often they possessed few local re- to convert nominal values into approximately constant (2000) sources besides cod, and were distant from population cen- Canadian dollars. The vertical scale in Figure 2 extends from ters or markets. In the analyses that follow, we focus on the zero to $90 million. Figure 3 graphs similar data for the comparatively urban Avalon Peninsula and on four rural Avalon Peninsula; note that the vertical scale runs from zero regions (Census divisions) that are Newfoundland’s most to $240 million. Fishing activities based on the Avalon were fisheries dependent: the Northern Peninsula, Notre Dame larger in total value, although proportionately smaller in Bay, South Coast and Burin Peninsula. In 1991, more than terms of employment. 20% of the Northern Peninsula’s labor force worked in “fish- Figures 2 and 3 depict fisheries responding to an eco- ing and trapping” (primarily fishing) industries. The Notre logical regime shift. Historically, groundfish species (espe- Dame Bay (12%), South Coast (10%) and Burin Peninsula cially cod) comprised most of the value. In these graphs, (8%) regions also leaned heavily on fishing. In contrast, fish- groundfish landings show general declines punctuated by ing comprised a smaller fraction (2%) of jobs on the Avalon sharp drops around 1992-94, as the Northern Cod and other Peninsula. Even the Avalon, however, contains rural areas key fisheries closed down. While groundfish declined, two and outports. crustacean species became much more important: snow crab Figure 2 tracks changes in the landed value of fisheries (Chionoecetes opilio) and northern shrimp (Pandalus bore- products by type, in four rural regions over 1986-2000. Raw alis). These and some other invertebrates grew more abun- data were provided by the Newfoundland Region Department dant as predatory groundfish disappeared (for one analysis of of Fisheries and Oceans (see Collins and Corbett 2000). For the cod-shrimp correlation, see Lilly, Parsons and Kulka our analysis, we aggregated port-of-landing information into 2000). At the same time that the ecological regime was shift- Census division units, and applied the consumer price index ing, there were also market changes (Apostle et al. 1998). 2 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 Hamilton and Butler for a new stable state. Shrimp are relatively short-lived species,