Parallel collapses of Canadian cod (Gadus morhua) and European hake (Merluccius merluccius) fisheries: "Chronicle of a death foretold"

Research PaperSetting aside the traditional simplistic “tragedy of the commons” notion, fisheries crises observed in the Northern Atlantic may be seen as the result of “mismatches” in the decision making process. The collapse of two fisheries, Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) in Canada and European Hake (Merluccius merluccius) in Europe, illustrate the failure of fishery systems, where strong, and often conflictive, interactions between biology, economics and social interests lead to those mismatches. The current work aims at analysing the role of those elements in the overexploitation spiral of biological collapse. Even if those two fisheries take place in different geographical and political environments, they appear to evolve in comparable socio-economic and management frames. That makes reference to TAC/quotas management mechanisms, high pressures from the industry and final fish demands and recruitment/growth overfishing schemes. The management decision making process is analysed from the history of stocks biological assessment and management decisions as well as from market analysis, using econometric methods as time series and cointegration techniques, and finally institutional frame analysis. The analysis shows that similar decision making philosophy lead to similar effects. It shows that the observed inefficiencies of the management systems for those two fisheries corroborate that bio-economic sustainable objectives can differ from political objectives based on a "sustainable social peace" independently of the institutional frame of the fishery. The sad experience of Canadian cod fishery has not been a lesson for Europeans to set up a precautionary pattern, before the same problems occur only few years later