The Disappearing Act of Atlantic Codfish (Gadus Morhua):

Where are they going?

Abigail Murphy

Stockton University

MARS-1100-093

Survey of Ocean Life

Professor Dana Christensen

December 3rd, 2020

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Abstract

Atlantic Codfish or its latin name, ​Gadus Morhua, h​ as been the main staple to numerous cultures

and has been a large reason food supply for many. Atlantic Codfish is even been said as the only

reason that many cultures survived traveling to new worlds including the colonization of

America. But in the past few decades the population of Atlantic Codfish has begun to decrease

rapidly and people don’t know why the population has not rebounded yet. With numbers in the

Atlantic Codfish population still continuing to decline scientists have started researching factors

that could be affecting the population and ways for the codfish population to mend and come

back to healthier numbers. Some factors brought up by researchers are climate change, with the

rising temperatures on earth the water is slowly warming also affecting a majority of marine

species. Overfishing has also put a toll on Atlantic Codfish, a substantial amount of overfishing

comes from commercial boats that use a method called trawling to obtain their target fish. Most

commercial boats are targeting another species of fish like Haddock and Atlantic Codfish ends

up caught in the net and becoming a bycatch for the fishermen. Recreational fishermen are also a

contributor to the overfishing of Atlantic Codfish even with restrictions in place not all poaching

is caught by conservation officers and most times goes unnoticed. For centuries ​Gadus Morhua

has been abundant in population but has struggled to mend its population numbers through the

years.

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Atlantic Codfish

When explorers first came to America, Atlantic Codfish were extremely plentiful and were a

main food source as they were salted and exported to Europe.“​When European explorers first

arrived, they wrote about cod being so plentiful that they could be caught by simply scooping

them up in a bucket. Over time, the cod populations declined”(Iburg).​ ​Atlantic Codfish have

been a dominant fish in markets around the world because of its delicious meat. But most

Atlantic Codfish sold today in fish markets is not actually Atlantic codfish, it's other similar

species of white meat fish like hake, pollock, and dogfish. In the late 70’s, the Atlantic Codfish

population began to rapidly decline and by 1993 the Atlantic Codfish population completely

collapsed and a moratorium was put on the species until the population made a comeback.” The

stock was closed to directed fishing in 1992, and has remained closed in the offshore, but there

have been no sustained signs of recovery of offshore populations. The first decline was caused

by overfishing,....the collapse in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s was caused by a confluence of

negative factors”(Lilly). A large possible contributor to the immense decline in Atlantic Codfish

has been climate change. With the earth continuously changing and getting warmer and warmer

scientists have noticed that Atlantic Codfish have been travelling to deeper colder water. “Stocks

in the Celtic and Irish Seas are expected to disappear under predicted temperature changes by the

year 2100, while those in the southern North Sea and Georges Bank will decline. Cod will likely

spread northwards along the coasts of Greenland and Labrador, occupying larger areas of the

Barents Sea”(Drinkwater). Water temperature does not just affect the location of Atlantic

Codfish, it also affects their reproduction, growth ,and feeding habits. With warmer water

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temperatures Codfish begin to grow faster from juvenile to adult.”Field and laboratory studies

show that the temperatures at which maximum growth rates of juvenile and adult cod are size

dependent. These temperatures lie in the range 10e15(C, growth rates of larger fish peaking at

lower temperatures. Reduced growth rates at the extreme ends of the temperature range are, in

part, due to changes in feeding rates. Laboratory experiments found that adult cod ate well at

temperatures within their normal tolerance range, but ceased feeding at very low 0℃ and very

high (O17(C) temperatures, even in the presence of sufficient available food”(Drinkwater).

Higher water temperatures have also been found to affect reproduction according to Kenneth

Drinkwater. In his research he found that the age of maturity on an Atlantic Codfish decreases

about one year for every 2℃ increase in bottom water temperature (Drinkwater). When

temperatures are higher spawning season tends to be earlier. Atlantic Codfish eggs are also

temperature sensitive, where warmer waters shorten the incubation period for the fish. Rising

temperature tends to be the biggest factor for Atlantic Codfish since their migration patterns and

growth are all affected by temperature. Atlantic Codfish early survival rates decreased with

rising water temperature, reducing the possibility of the population making a mend and rising to

safer numbers. “Landings of cod have undergone large scale and coherent fluctuations over the

last century in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank and are currently at low levels in both

regions. Periods of low cod landings have corresponded with periods of high water temperature,

although many fishery-related factors affect landings in addition to environmental variables.

Temperature affects virtually every aspect of the biology and ecology of cod, including its

distribution, recruitment success, the number of young cod surviving to a specified age or size”

(AH. Altieri). Through my findings I found it very difficult to pinpoint different methods used to

come up with this research, and I have found that the most common method was just through

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research boats and researchers and observers accompanying commercial fishermen on their

expeditions and analyzing the numbers of what the fleets would catch.

Overfishing has also been a factor of the declining population of Atlantic Codfish. With

Codfish being in such high demand, populations of the species have been overfished

commercially and recreationally. Even with moratoriums in place on Atlantic Codfish the

population still continues to decline as the species is still caught as bycatch in commercial

trawling nets. As commercial fishermen are targeting other species in the area such as haddock

and pollock most nets are filled with juvenile Atlantic Codfish and end up being disposed of in

the ocean. But recent research with local fishermen and scientists have come up with a trawling

net that will keep Atlantic Codfish from being caught in the net. “In the waters off New England,

haddock are rebounding at a faster rate than other fish species, particularly codfish. This team of

scientists and fishermen decided to figure out a way to catch the haddock and let the codfish go

through the net.​The team first looked at the particular habits of haddock and cod. When the

fishing net approaches the haddock, they tend to go up higher in the water column, and codfish

tend to go down. So the idea was to design a net with a specialized separator composed of ropes

that guide the haddock towards the top while releasing cod through an opening on the

bottom”(U.S. Department of Commerce). After a week of using the new and improved trawling

net the number of Atlantic Codfish caught in the net declined greatly and the net proved to be a

huge success. Recreational Atlantic Cod Fishing seems to be the most difficult to control with so

many fishermen fishing the ocean conservation officers struggle some days to keep track and

inspect boats that claim to be fishing for “other” species of fish and not targeting Codfish.

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Conclusion

So why care so much about one species of fish when there are thousands more in the

ocean? If the water continues to warm and fisheries continue to overfish the population the

Atlantic Codfish will rapidly decline with no chance of bouncing back and end up extinct.

Atlantic Codfish would not be the first fish to be overfished and certainly would not be the last

population to be overfished. With some knowledge of why the species is declining, moratoriums

have been put in place to control the overfishing of Atlantic Codfish, but nothing can really be

done about the warming of ocean waters. Populations of Atlantic Codfish are still declining and

have not really recovered from the collapse in 1993 and it may never recover.

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References

Drinkwater F. K, The response of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) to future climate

change, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Volume 62, Issue 7, 2005, Pages
1327–1337, ​https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icesjms.2005.05.015

Iburg, C. (n.d.). Atlantic Cod. Retrieved December 03, 2020, from

https://nature.ca/notebooks/english/atlanticcod.html

Kell, L., Pilling, G., & O'Brien, C. (2005, January 01). Implications of climate
change for the management of North Sea cod (Gadus morhua). Retrieved
November 25, 2020, from
https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/62/7/1483/660898

Kleiven, A., Fernandez-Chacon, A., Nordahl, J., Moland, E., Espeland, S., Knutsen,
H., & Olsen, E. (n.d.). Harvest Pressure on Coastal Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua)
from Recreational Fishing Relative to Commercial Fishing Assessed from
Tag-Recovery Data. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0149595

Lilly, G. R. (n.d.). The Decline, Recovery, and Collapse of Atlantic Cod (Gadus
Morhua) off Labrador and Eastern Newfoundland. ​Alaska Sea Grant.​ Retrieved
November 20, 2020.

AH. Altieri, J., TP. Barnett, D., MJ. Behrenfeld, R., Brander, K., RA. Clark, C., A.
Dai, A., . . . WM. Washington, J. (1970, January 01). Potential climate change
impacts on Atlantic cod ( Gadus morhua ) off the northeastern USA. Retrieved
December 04, 2020, from
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11027-007-9131-4

US Department of Commerce, N. (2011, July 05). Reducing Bycatch. Retrieved

December 04, 2020, from https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/reducingbycatch/

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