Re: tonight Discovery is
I dunno, they kept pushing the "climate change" mantra as a big factor...It happened to Newfoundland even worse than New England, and I doubt they disappeared there because of warm water.
The problem is simple to me and I am no marine biologist..
You catch, kill and eat too many Cod for too many years. Unrelenting pressure.
Now, nature abhors a vacuum, so the Dogfish population explodes far beyond what it should be.. So now you have far fewer and much smaller cod, producing far less offspring, and those few offspring that are hatched are quickly eaten by the Dogfish hordes.. We are further south in NJ and have had a little increase in Cod over the past few years here, at least from what I can see in my personal observation, and from fishing reports right here.. I have seen smaller Cod taken on several Tog trips in late fall, on crabs, in only 60-70 FOW. Years ago, that was simply something I had never witnessed.
Personally, I don't buy the global warming theory.
The water is plenty cool enough for Cod in New England.
People just need to learn that you cannot take take take for hundreds of years and still have unlimited stocks of fish forever.. Sooner or later the population collapses.. In the story they related how Canada totally stopped Cod fishing off Newfoundland.. It still took 20 + year for the stocks to begin to recover. I hope it doesn't come to that in the states.
The population in the US has tripled in the past 100 years. lots of people like to eat Cod, and the Cod simply could not stand the pressure.. Its simple math.... bob
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