Who Killed the Grand Banks?: The Untold Story Behind the Decimation of One of the World's Greatest Natural Resources Hardback - 2008 - 1st Edition

Before the biological reality of what we Canadians were doing to our fish stocks hit home, it was just too late. That reality dropped like a bombshell in 1992. It emerged that cod stocks were in free fall, estimated to be at less than one per cent of the levels of the 1960s. Despite a decade-long moratorium, the cod still have not returned in significant numbers. A mystery indeed. And one that just might be telescoping future environmental and ecoystem destruction today. And while there are many different theories for the collapse -- botched science, timorous and fluctuating political will, a boom in the seal population, the failure of the government to extend the fishing ban to the edges of the Grand Banks; to go beyond Canada's territorial waters -- the ecosystem of these chilly waters has changed dramatically. Despite a decade of rhetorical hand wringing -- served up with dollops of Canadian sanctimony -- there emerges one indisputable truth: The Grand Banks cod fishery has been wiped out because of greed and made-in-Canada stupidity. Who Killed the Grand Banks is timely. The collapse continues to haunt scientists across Canada and around the world. In January 2007, a group of international ecologists and economists warned that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates. Experts emphasize that overfishing is hampering the ocean's ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients and resist the spread of disease. The collapse is also inextricably linked to Canada's image of itself, to its place on the world stage at a time when many of the country's other resources -- minerals, oil and gas, forests, hydroelectricity and fresh water -- are being extracted and sold at a dizzying pace to satisfy galloping economic and industrial growth in China and India. Precisely what did happen to our East Coast cod stocks? How did we destroy one of the world's great resources? Unraveling this mystery is critically important for Canadians. The author intends to find out whether the Tar Sands of northern Alberta, the forests of British Columbia, and the diamond mines in Yukon will become 21st-century versions of the cod stock fiasco. When the commodity boom cycles to a halt, will Canadians be left to clean up the poisoned lakes and rivers, and polluted air in a landscape of desecrated slag heaps?