THE COD MORATORIUM YEARS

A photo gallery of images leading up to the 1992 Cod Moratorium

Newfoundland has had many economic set backs in its history. Most often attached to successive bad fishing years and the failure of the fishing industry. This was always followed shortly there after with a large exodus of workers and their families out of the province in search of work.

In 1992 Newfoundland faced an ecological disaster of a complete collapse of the Northern Cod fishery. An entire species of fish hunted to the brink of extinction. A one time sustainable resource, the very reason for the existence of Newfoundland, that had endured for 400 years, now wiped out by corporate offshore factory freezer trawlers that vacuumed up the fish from the ocean 24/7.

The Canadian government through it’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans banned all fishing. Subsequently an estimated 30,000 people abandoned rural Newfoundland for other provinces for work. Here are some photos from that time.

Also see our story, A Petty Harbour Story.