Each year the Department of Fisheries and Ocean’s Science Advisory division releases a stock assessment report of Northern Cod in 2J3KL regions of the province. John Brattey, DFO Scientist, told that the basis message of the report is, from a broad perspective, the northern cod stocks are doing pretty good. He also added that North and south of that central part the stocks aren’t showing much change, it’s showing a slight increase but nothing like what we’ve seen in the central region. But Port Hope Simpson fisherman, Lemuel Rumbolt, says there was a lot of cod in his area last year. He mentioned that last year it took no time for him to get a little over 3,000 pounds of cod.
Brattey expressed that DFO hasn’t been able to collect as much information from Labrador because they weren’t able to tag fish to look at their movements and growth. He told that stocks have increased a little bit but still the catch rate is nowhere near as high as they are further south.
According to Rumbolt the main problem DFO had with northern cod since the moratorium is just the survival of the fish; what they’ve seen for many years, right up until about 2003, was 60 per cent of fish were dying off every year. Brattey said there is a very high mortality rate that is cropping the fish down all the time and not giving them a chance to grow.
Brattey informed that on the south there seems to be these coastal populations of cod that reside in the inshore base, throughout the year, which has helped support the fishery, but in Labrador, other than Gilbert Bay, there doesn’t seem to be much that over winters in the inshore area. He further said that the next step for DFO would be to hold meetings with fishermen in the province to discuss the Stock Assessment of Northern Cod report.
