Sacred Cod on Discovery tonight
 

9pm


https://vimeo.com/142846319

I went out on the Island Current in Jan and did alright. I have done better on Cox in the summer. I had one day a couple years ago with a 30 and a lost slammer after a short battle,rolled up my leader and gone.
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Sad

I started watching it... between the commercials and the dramatization..it just got too depressing.... I recall the many years that we jigged codfish in the mouth of the river most of the winter when the weather was conducive to launching a 16' aluminum skiff and anytime you wanted a codfish fish dinner you could scare up enough for a meal or two from the beach anytime you had an early evening high tide...now... we can't even keep 1....if it is as bad as they say... all fishing should be stopped. Not just the recreational sector.. I threw back a lot of codfish last year while haddock fishing...the inshore waters in May and early June had cod outnumber haddock about 5:1... until the draggers came through...then there were only whiting and mud hake.

Watched some of it and clearly there is a difference in opinions, obviously the people making a living on cod aren't believing the fisheries management stock assessments. For us striper fishermen, it seemed for the longest time, the reverse was true; management wasn't believing our stock assessments.

Still it's sad to see an entire industry come to a close, but like the whaling industries of the past, when you hunt your livelihood to the point of extinction; the other shoe eventually drops. With all the push in the media that eating more fish and less red meat is the healthier option and sushi bars sprouting up like McDonald's, there has to be a strain on the stocks and global warming is only going to make matters worse.

I watched it, pretty interesting.

One thing that I thought was telling was towards the end of the program they mentioned that Nova Scotia had put a cod moratorium in place I think back in 1991, and it's taken 25 years for the stocks to significantly rebound.

I'm sure the most prudent thing would be to do the same here. Unfortunate for the fisherman and supporting businesses. But in my opinion, they've done themselves in, just like with the striped bass, tuna, etc. issues. Sad.

man is his own worst enemy.

Very gripping, very sad.

Watching now with a grain of salt :(

It is available on demand (comcast) if anyone's interested.

Thanks Jenn, just watched it on-demand...
??? Interesting, but I would only give it a 6.5 rating
Showed both view points, but lacked depth IMO

The downfall began when they stopped sailing schooners and stacking dories with hand cod lines on deck.

In certain areas they are lots of nice cod around a big nuisance when haddock fishing. Sometimes 8 of 10 fish over the side are keeper cod.

I see both points of view. When the dragger was invented, destroying bottom habitat and netting 10's of thousands of pounds....well that is just unsustainable.

Go back to hook and line. If one were to invest in a few auto jiggers along the rail you could jig a thousand or more pounds at $3 a pound. Should be able to make a living.

For what it's worth the owner of that big boat even thou not catching allot was driving a pretty new nice truck and the house in the burbs wasn't too shabby either.....

Regulation wise, now this is where it gets ridiculous. From the uscg to noaa to nefms too many to keep up with.
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Interesting show but I got conflicting point of views by the fishermen depending on which argument they wanted to make. In one part they were saying they could go out and get a full season's quota in 15 minutes hauling a net, but later they said there were no cod left for them to catch. So which is it?

I was confused by that, too. One commercial fishermen said there were no cod left to get. Others said there were plenty of cod.

One scientist said that the western part of the Gulf Of Maine (presumably an easier steam for Gloucster boats) had cod, but much of the rest of the Gulf, was barren. So if that's all that's left in that one section, it needs to be protected and allowed to grow.

What I didn't hear, was anyone on the commercial side, admitting that they played any role at all in this. Plenty of blame for global warming. I wonder why global warming isn't harming the dogfish populations.

EXCELLENT point! As I have said before when it comes to the management of every single species is that all stakeholders hold a responsibility for current population levels. Far too often there is no acceptance of blame in any way, shape or form. I saw this in the recent striped bass management talks a few years ago, and it's the same with cod.

And politicians are our enemies.
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Toby & Jim,

You bring up a good point but consider this... Is it the commercial fisherman's job to regulate their industry or is it NOAA's? Need I say more? These guys are going out and filling their quota's set by the feds... so who's to blame?

That's a pretty good point...I wouldn't say it's the commercial fisherman's responsibility to evaluate the health of the fish stock, but he has a vested interest (if not the responsibility) in giving some thought to the long-term health of the stock, and the sustainability of current practices.

But that doesn't mean they can't admit that they played a large role in the collapse of the stocks. I don't think you need to be a marine biologist to figure out that dragging probably isn't something designed to ensure the long term health of the fish stock.

For whatever its worth, I too experienced the insanely dense schools of cod on Jeffrey's last year. Not just one trip either..I am talking May-August on different parts of the ledge. Hard to get away from at times. I am not saying the stock is healthy, but it is certainly very understandable that it is hard for these guys to buy that we only have 3% of the sustainable stock biomass in the GOM, when you are literally running from schools of cod to put together a haddock limit...

Cod in general are in very poor shape, maybe more so in the GOM stock than George's, but I too honestly believe we have more fish than they say we do. When you look at some of the recent MASSIVE snafu's made in things like MRIP data... then you really start to question the agency's competence with statistical analysis, which is what all of this modeling is based on.

For those of you who aren't familiar with aforementioned MRIP screw up, they had figured average porgy and sea bass weights in the NY Bight of ~10-15 lbs per fish when calculating quotas for the coming season.... scary. Why did none of the statisticians notice this? Because they are simply not well familiarized with the fish/fishery. Just an example of the disconnect folks...

I watched it and found it all to be very interesting and of course
heart breaking.... from resource, social economic, and New England
heritage perspective.

Same with the briefly mentioned condition of the lobster fishery and the
unspoken situation with the Striped Bass. Seems like just about
every fishery is on wobbly legs here in the Northeast.

I really do no care who is at fault as its a collective problem. I just hope
someone comes up with a solution that sticks.

regarding the studies and the data....it would be great for it
to be more accurate, but clearly there is a problem.

The dogfish fishery was the only positive breath in the whole
documentary. That was pretty interesting to watch. Sign me up to
eat some of those mirror eyed critters!!! Hopefully the unlimited
supply is not just another error in calculations. Like, what other fish
can we think of that was described as having unlimited supply???
hmmmm.

I was snagging them on my Sabiki rigs out on georges this past fall.
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