Educating about cod where people eat
People who know Newfoundlanders would hardly ever think the keepers of a 500-year-old cod fishery would require education about the fish species that settled and supported their island for centuries.
But that’s precisely what Kathleen Blanchard has set out to do with an informational placemat that tells diners plenty about the fish. The fabled Newfoundland cod resource collapsed and the commercial fishery was shut down overnight in July of 1992.
This historic collapse was unlike any ever seen by scientists and the rebuilding is slow, varied, complicated and unpredictable.
“We’re not having a dialogue about cod recovery,” said Blanchard, founder of Intervale, a nonprofit conservation organization based in Newfoundland and Labrador. “The public is not engaged.”
Commercial fishermen, scientists, fisheries regulators and politicians are still talking about cod, of course, but the news has died down and the public isn’t hearing all the latest information, said Blanchard.
“We wanted to get the latest information into their hands in a user-friendly way,” said Blanchard. “We put the placemats into family restaurants, the kinds of places where Newfoundlanders eat out – the Irvings and such.”
“It took a huge amount of research to get information for a simple placemat. We needed the collaboration of the union (Fish, Food and Allied Workers), the government and the scientists. We had to show images of more modern fishing techniques, rather than heritage pictures.” An artist from Labrador did the illustrations.
She worked for the Quebec-Labrador Foundation (QLF) for 25 years, and for National Audubon (“They called me Ms. Eastern Egg Rock”) and in Muscongus Bay, Maine. She founded Intervale in 2003.
Blanchard, whose family hails from Newfoundland’s Codroy Valley, says she feels she has three homes, because of her work in these places: the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the state of Massachusetts, and eastern Canada. Her ancestors were pioneers, fishermen, guides, trappers, and seal hunters of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador and Cape Breton
Although the information on the placemat is intended primarily for residents, to keep the knowledge alive and fresh, she doesn’t mind if the tourists happen to learn something as well. In fact, in one case she heard that some tourists read the placemat in a Port aux Choix restaurant and as soon as they finished their meal, headed straight down to the docks to talk to fishermen about cod.
The cod placemat sits appropriately below a plate of pan-fried cod in a Port aux Choix restaurant in Newfoundland. (Photo by Kathleen Blanchard)
Illustrations for the placemat were done by a Labrador artists.
“We want people to know the essential concepts,” said Blanchard. “But also, studies by Dalhousie (University in Nova Scotia) show people no longer have a memory of big cod. We want to capture that living memory before the older generation dies out.”
Facts represented on the placemat that astound readers, include the fecundity of cod: it grows as the fish grow large and old – unusual in most species of animals.
“The vast majority of an older cod’s eggs are produced in the last years of its life,” she explained. “If a cod lives for 16 years, it will produce 25 million eggs. If it lives to be 25, it will produce up to 50 million eggs – half its lifetime production in the last years.”
Barriers exist to conserving the older, larger, more fecund fish, however. In commercial fisheries, most size limits regulate the taking of small, young fish.
“In the ‘food fishery’ in Newfoundland, for instance, people are not allowed to release a fish in order to get another. This would be considered ‘high-grading’ in a commercial fishery – or throwing one back to get a larger one. So there’s no legal way to throw a larger one back to get a smaller one.”
The food fishery, or recreational fishery, is opened for limited periods each summer to allow Newfoundlanders to catch cod for their personal use.
“I’m not coming down on one side or the other,” Blanchard said. “I just want to keep the discussion alive.
Newfoundland’s not the only place with cod, or resource problems. Cod stocks have plummeted in the Gulf of Maine and around the globe in the past 20 years, with varying degrees of rebuilding.
Intervale’s cod placemat is proving popular with restaurants, harvesters, universities (where it is used in teaching) and with”The target audience was reached,” said Blanchard. “Then the secondary audience, then universities – where it is used in teaching – and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).”
So far, 100,000 have been distributed in Newfoundland and Labrador and a reprint is planned. It has also traveled beyond Newfoundland to be used in a few locations in Prince Edward, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec.
The French Shore Historical Society in Conche, Newfoundland, intends to reprint the placemat for use during a group of cod-related events they plan. The New England Aquarium in Boston has expressed interest in using the idea. And, a second set of placemats focusing on endangered species is planned for later this year.
Print
