Cod: The Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fishery

ANCIENT BEGINNINGS

Ocean…is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

H.P. LOVECRAFT, The White Ship, 1919

Genesis of the Grand Banks…

Cooling of the North Atlantic…

Ocean Waters: Currents, Temperatures, and Salt…

North Atlantic…

Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift…

Origin of the Fishes…

Origin of Cod…

Ice Ages…

The Last 1000 Years…

North Atlantic Oscillation…

Labrador Current…

ECOSYSTEMS ARE EVER CHANGING: their present state is a product of their history and a transition to the future. To understand present and future ecosystems, we must first look to the past, for in the memory of an ecosystem is everything that makes it what it has been, what it is, and what it can come to be.

The Grand Banks are the centrepiece of a broad continental shelf that rings northeastern North America – the Banks extend 500 kilometres off the island of Newfoundland into the northwest Atlantic. From this commanding position, the Grand Banks intercept and steer two of the major currents of the North Atlantic: the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current. Nutrients from the deep sea are brought to the surface by these currents. Over most of the Grand Banks, sea depths seldom exceed 150 metres, which allows light to penetrate to the seafloor over a vast expanse of ocean. The result of this unique combination of location, form, and depth is an elevated primary productivity that drove a fish abundance that startled early explorers. Historical catch rates of Atlantic cod in these waters were likely higher than in any fishery the world has ever known. The story of John Cabot’s fishing with baskets in a sea of cod is renowned; less well known are the tales of the Russians who fished these waters centuries later in the 1960s. Like many before them, they had never experienced such rich fishing, not even in their home waters of the Barents Sea that holds a cod stock millions of tonnes strong.¹

GENESIS OF THE GRAND BANKS

How did the Grand Banks and its adjacent continental shelf come to be? What forces created these huge undersea plateaus? The answers are to be found in the fundamental building and levelling processes of the earth’s surface. To begin, we must understand tectonics.

Tectonics is the study of the shifting surface of the earth. The earths crust began to cool some 4 billion years ago, forming 10-12 mobile pieces, or plates, like the stitched leather of a soccer ball. The plates moved around on the earth’s surface at speeds of one to two centimetres per year, driven by convectional heat flows arising from the molten core of the earth. There were no spaces between the plates. Hence, they pivoted and pushed against one another, with new crust forming at spreading lines and old crust sinking into the earth’s molten mantle where plates came together. Over the earth’s history, the location of plates - and the spreading and sinking lines between them - changed. At spreading lines, the newly forming crust was heavy, dark molten rock, termed basalt after it cooled and solidified. Like a conveyor belt, the new crust moved towards the sinking edge where it slid back into the molten mantle. As a consequence of these movements, nowhere in the world is the ocean crust older than about 160 million years. In contrast, the continents are comprised of much lighter and older granite rocks with ages up to 3.8 billion years. The continental landmasses have floated like giant icebergs on the oceanic plates since the initial cooling of the earth.²

Continental shelves are just that: underwater shoulders of continental landmasses, with old and light rocks as distinct from the deep ocean basalt as chalk is from cheese. Over eons of time, these floating landmasses have moved around the earth, and endured many collisions and separations that formed new continents and oceans, mountain ranges and deep valleys, both on land and under water. Where plate movements tore the landmasses apart, the continental shelf at their margins tended to become stretched and much wider, as is the case along the east coast of North America. Conversely, where a continent was pushed against another plate, the leading edge became compressed and the continental shelf narrow, as on the west coast of North America.

As plates and continents separated or pushed against each other, cracks or faults developed, forming blocks that were pushed up or folded to become mountains, or that sank to form deep basins. Such movements caused the earth’s surface to become uneven; over time, however, gravity and erosion worked against unevenness to flatten all landscapes, both above and below water, as old surfaces became levelled with broken and eroded sediments. All of these forces came into play in creating the Grand Banks.

The formation of the marine ecosystems off Newfoundland and Labrador began with the tectonics of long ago. Over 500 million years ago, the continental rock that now makes up the Grand Banks and the eastern part of the island of Newfoundland, as well as areas of coastal Nova Scotia and New England, was part of an ancient Euro-African landmass. The rocks in these now-separated locations are the same, as were the animals that lived there: the ancient fossils found on Newfoundland’s Atlantic coast also occur in North Africa and are totally different from the proto-North American fossils of western Newfoundland. At that time, the continental landmass that would later become North America was located much farther to the west. An immense body of water called the lapetus Sea separated these drifting protocontinents long before the Atlantic Ocean existed.³

1.1 Northwest Atlantic and the GrandBanks. Elevation exaggerated.

Plate movements began to close the lapetus Sea about 475 million years ago. Proto-North America, with the continental rocks of western Newfoundland at its leading edge, was driven towards the western edge of proto-Africa and Europe, whose front line was the rocks that would become eastern Newfoundland, the Avalon Peninsula, and the Grand Banks. As these great landmasses moved on a collision course, the earth’s crust brokeand rose under great pressure. In what is now western Newfoundland, oceanic crust was forced westwards and overrode younger marine sediments. At Table Mountain in Gros Morne National Park, as well as on the Great Northern Peninsula, huge broken slabs of 500-million-year-old basalt (termed ophiolites) sit on top of a jumble of younger rocks. This turnover of relatively young ocean-floor rock lies adjacent to some of the oldest exposed rocks on earth: the remnants of the 3-billion-year-old eastern coast of proto-North America. By 400 million years ago, the continental rocks along the collision line between proto-North America and Euro-Africa buckled and folded many times, giving rise to the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America, and the twisted and folded masses of rock of central Newfoundland.

As proto-North America and Euro-Africa merged, the great lapetus Sea closed and the rocks that now form the eastern and western parts of the island of Newfoundland were welded together. The weld is still highly visible, perhaps best observed near the town of Gambo. Geologists refer to the weld as the Dover Fault.⁴

For 200 million years, the rocks of present-day North America, Europe, and Africa remained united. Around 210 million years ago, during the late Triassic period, convection under the continents stirred again and the continental rock mass that would become North America began to move westward. Incredibly, parts of the old weld of proto-North America to Euro-Africa held. The inevitable rupture of the New World from the Old World occurred not where they had originally collided, but farther to the east. Former bits of Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) became the eastern parts of the island of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New England. The immense block of continental rock than now underlies the Grand Banks became the trailing edge of the westward moving New World. As spreading continued, the stretching of continental rock caused cracking, or faulting, on both the east and west sides, and a rift valley was formed, similar to the major rift that today divides eastern Africa. For more than 10 million years, in the early Jurassic period, the rift was landlocked with the Grand Banks on one side and the Iberian Peninsula on the other. Over the millennia, rivers from the new and old continents deposited layers of sediments on top of the continental rocks.

About 190 million years ago, the Atlantic rift was periodically invaded by seawater from the great southern ocean and the area that would become the Grand Banks got its first taste of saltwater. At first, the rift was the low point of the landscape and no water flowed out, so the seawater evaporated and left salt deposited in the valley. As the spreading of the rift continued, the rocks underlying the valley became stretched and thinner, and the rift sank deeper. More water poured in from the south. The basins, sediments, and hills of the last collapsing link between the Old World and New World became the foundation of the Grand Banks. At this time, an Arctic land bridge linking the northern Canadian islands to Greenland and to Norway was also above water. Twenty million years later, the spreading of the Old and New Worlds to the south became so severe that the stretched ocean crust in the middle of the newly forming Atlantic Ocean fissured to the molten mantle below. A ridge of volcanoes developed along the spreading line, forming the North Atlantic Ridge and the island of Iceland. At the trailing edges of the moving continental rock, intense pressures led to faulting and the formation of sunken regions, including the Jeanne D’Arc, Orphan, and Whale basins. Sediments began to accumulate within these basins -50 million years later, in the late Jurassic period, rich oil reserves were formed.⁵ As North America floated relentlessly westward, the failing land bridge between Newfoundland and Euro-Africa (Spain or Morocco) fractured and disappeared underwater.

1.2 The formation of the North Atlantic Ocean, with physical features in the early Jurassic period (150-180 million years ago), the early Tertiary period (60 million years ago), the mid- Tertiary period (25-30 million years ago), and the Quaternary period (last million years).

The tropical seawaters that crept into the sinking rift between Europe and North America carried a myriad of planktonic animals and plants. Invertebrates and fishes followed, creating an ecosystem from what was essentially an ecological tabula rasa. The early North Atlantic and Arctic were tropical oceans, not cold ones as they are in the present day.⁶ There were no ice caps. Temperate forests flourished in Greenland, at Spitsbergen north of Norway, and in Newfoundland and Labrador, and tropical forests grew in Great Britain and Europe.⁷

We can only speculate on what the earliest North Atlantic ecosystem was like. The Caribbean or Mediterranean seas are perhaps the closest modern day analogues. The waters were likely warm and salty, and early plankton, invertebrates, and fishes would have been tropical species. Ancient deepwater species, such as the lanternfish, moved in. Some pelagic species – those that live in the surface waters – came north in summer to feed and retreated south with the seasons, as many still do today. Others stayed year round. There were probably many more species than exist today.⁸ In terms of the species that inhabited the early northern seas, the Caribbean and Mediterranean are imperfect analogies – most early arrivals to the North Atlantic are now extinct, eliminated by time and changing environments.

The Grand Banks, underlain by continental rock, became the trailing edge of a westward-moving New World and the eastern shore of the new continent. A large knoll of uplifted rock, a sort of tectonic anchor, was dragged behind and would eventually become the Flemish Cap. The trailing edge contained some of the oldest rock on earth (up to 3.6 billion years old) floating on some of the youngest.⁹

Today, the Grand Banks have sharp edges, despite millions of years of erosion. Seamen know them from the swell and smell of their waters - you are either on the Banks or off them. At the edges of the Banks, the ocean floor drops over 1000 metres within a few nautical miles (1 nautical mile = 1852 metres). These steep slopes were moulded by two ancient transform faults in the continental and oceanic rock on the southern and northeastern edges. Transform faults occur as one tectonic plate slides against another, forming cracks in the crust that follow the direction of motion. Rock movements, whether uplifting or sinking, differ on opposing sides of a transform fault. The southern margin of the Grand Banks lies along a major transform fault: to the southeast, oceanic crust moved farther westward unimpeded by overlying continental rock, while, to the north-west, overlying continental rocks of the Grand Banks floated with the plate, resisting movement, and kept the Banks prominent above the underlying basalt.¹⁰

The northern limits of the Grand Banks formed more recently and in a different direction. For much of the early history of the North Atlantic, land extended seaward from the Avalon Peninsula over 400 kilometres from its present position. However, about 65-75 million years ago, the series of great calamities marking the end of the Cretaceous period occurred. Climates altered, resulting in major biological changes. Dinosaurs, the dominant large animals, became extinct. In the North Atlantic, the earth’s crust shifted and an old transform fault, called Charlie, reactivated just to the north of the Grand Banks. The continental shelf from the Avalon Peninsula to the present Southeast Shoal of the Grand Banks, then dry land, uplifted farther, while a huge rock wedge to the north sank on a hinge to the Charlie transform. The sinking of this great block of continental crust, which came to underlie the oil-rich Orphan Basin, allowed seawater to flow in and separate the outer edges of North America from the receding and submerged lands that stretched from Ireland to Greenland. The Flemish Cap had by then separated from Europe, and Atlantic waters were flowing into a newly opening Labrador Sea.

The centre of the Labrador Sea was a spreading ridge of new basalt crust, and the stretching of the land margins in Labrador and Greenland resulted in a widening of their continental shelves. These shelves, including the northeast Newfoundland and Labrador shelf, are smaller than the Grand Banks – they extend less than 200 kilometres from land in most places, and narrow to the north in proportion to the spreading between Labrador and Greenland. Eventually, seafloor spreading between Labrador and Greenland ceased, and a new centre of spreading developed between Greenland and the United Kingdom. During this epoch, the Orphan Basin settled into its modern and mostly deepwater position under the merged Atlantic Ocean and Labrador Sea. On the northeast Newfoundland shelf, its sunken area north of the uplifted Grand Banks would in time form the Bonavista Corridor, one of the great cod migration routes of the world.¹¹

Spreading at the mid-Atlantic Ridge and continental sedimentation continued after the calamities of the end of the Cretaceous period, but the outline of what would become the Grand Banks and continental shelf of Newfoundland and Labrador was largely in place, although still mostly above water.¹² Ocean floor spreading continues to the present day at a rate of about one to three centimetres per year, and the underwater banks that trail behind westward-moving Newfoundland continue to pivot westward and subside.¹³ The land sinks too: Signal Hill at St. John’s is not quite as high as it was when Marconi received his famous message across the Atlantic from Poldhu, England, in 1901.

COOLING OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC

About 50 million years ago, the earth’s climate began to cool. The initial and most extreme temperature declines occurred at the poles, and, within 10 million years, the first ice formed in the Antarctic seas. Arctic waters also cooled, but not as quickly as those in the Antarctic. Antarctic ice sheets began to form, perhaps intermittently at first, but by 25 million years ago a large ice cap became grounded.¹⁴ Ice formation took large amounts of seawater out of circulation, lowering sea levels worldwide by perhaps as much as 300 metres.¹⁵ For a time, the increasingly frigid Arctic and the warmer Atlantic waters were separated by the Arctic land bridge linking Greenland to Norway. About 38 million years ago, this bridge slipped beneath the rising seas, allowing colder waters to pour southward into the North Atlantic. There were inevitable and extreme biological consequences.

While the earliest North Atlantic was a species-rich tropical world, the cooling of the past 40-50 million years has produced a sparse and subarctic environment. Few of the original Atlantic tropical species survived, and those that did moved far to the south. Most species became extinct and are found today only as fossils.¹⁶ To the north, the ecosystems became simpler, with fewer species and less complex food webs.¹⁷ There are few ancient species in the North Atlantic - its environment has been too variable for species to survive over long periods of time. Although the long-term cooling has been interrupted from time to time with warmer climate episodes, it has resulted in the development of ice sheets over the Arctic and Greenland landmasses. More recently, ice ages have come and gone. Ancient fishes, such the 100-million-year-old coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), that have survived in the stable environments of subtropical southern oceans do not occur in the dynamic environments of the North Atlantic or Arctic oceans.

The ancient ecosystems of the North Atlantic probably did not include any of its modern species, although many of their ancestors were likely present. Early ecosystems may not have been as productive as the modern varieties, because the circulation upon which productivity depends was weaker. Nonetheless, the physical basement of the Grand Banks and continental shelf was in place long ago, and modern ecosystems have been profoundly influenced by their genesis. Of the species that currently inhabit the North Atlantic, most evolved only recently during the past 3-5 million years, and many came from other oceans, especially the North Pacific.¹⁸

The changes in the North Atlantic ecosystems over the millennia were not isolated from the rest of the world or its oceans. The genesis of the North Atlantic and the Grand Banks was part of a major tectonic event that separated the Old World from the New World and that brought western North America closer to Asia. About 80 million years ago, the circulation of warmer Pacific waters to the Arctic was impeded as North America (Alaska) shunted towards Asia, and eventually the two continents collided. Perhaps 40 million years ago, the newly formed basin of the North Pacific became a centre for marine evolution in the cooling northern hemisphere; this would eventually have great consequences for the North Atlantic.¹⁹ The Bering land bridge blocked all flows from the Pacific to the Arctic and shielded the North Pacific somewhat from the extreme cooling of the Arctic region until about 6-12 million years ago.²⁰

On the Grand Banks, huge masses of eroded sediment from land buried the under-water continental rocks and filled in most of the basins. Accumulated deposits in these areas are 10-15 kilometres deep. The sinking of the Grand Banks and the rise in sea levels submerged most, but not all, of what was once dry land: to the great surprise of early mariners, the Virgin Rocks of the Grand Banks still break water some 200 kilometres from shore. The edges of the Grand Banks blocked and redirected water flows. In particular, the steep edge of the southern Grand Banks opposed the northward-moving Gulf Stream, helping to turn it eastward, while the northern edge steered the southward-moving Labrador Current in a broad arc around its perimeter. At the southeastern corner of the Great Banks, these two moving titans collide.

OCEAN WATERS: CURRENTS, TEMPERATURES, AND SALT

The oceans are neither homogeneous nor randomly mixed waters. They are comprised of moving masses of water with differing properties and distinct boundaries between adjacent masses: some waters are warmer than others, with temperatures ranging from sub-zero to more than 30°C; some are saltier, with salinities from near fresh to very salty (36 psu²¹); and some contain far more nutrients than others, so that water masses range from nearly sterile to richly fertilized. Floating plankton accumulate at the borders, or fronts, between different water masses and attract fish.

Ocean water masses are in perpetual motion. Colder and saltier water masses are denser than warmer and fresher waters. Cold, salty waters sink, displacing lighter waters and driving much of the circulation in the oceans. Currents, formed from directed and narrowed flows driven by these differences in density as well as by orbital forces and wind, redistribute the oceans’ nutrients and heat. Currents mould the biological parts of marine ecosystems. They bring heat or cold, and salt. They bring nutrients, or cause their upwelling from richer, usually deeper waters, and enhance the fluid environment that fosters the dispersal of plankton and fishes. In conjunction with depth and light, currents ultimately determine the patterns of ocean productivity and the limits of marine ecosystems.

North Atlantic

The ecosystems of Newfoundland and Labrador are strongly influenced both by the icy waters of the southerly flowing Labrador Current and the heated waters of the northeasterly flowing Gulf Stream, which meet near the southern edge of the Grand Banks. Exactly when these currents began to flow is not certain,²² but their very existence resulted from several events in the earth’s history: the joining of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans about 38 million years ago and the subsequent cooling of the North Atlantic; the partial closure of the Pacific-Arctic connection much later; and the emergence of the Panama land bridge that joined the North and South American continents.

For many millions of years after the Atlantic opened, prevailing easterly winds at the equator produced westerly ocean currents that flowed directly and without interruption to the Pacific through the gap between North and South America. There was little northward flow. Between 12 million and 3.5 million years ago, the equatorial flows changed radically when the Panama land bridge emerged to connect the Americas.²³ This event transformed the North Atlantic: after the closure, the buildup of water in the Gulf of Mexico turned north along the Florida coast in a huge jet of water called the Gulf Stream.

The currents of the present-day North Atlantic are complex. From the ocean surface to the seafloor, there may be two or three different water masses, each with its own temperature, salinity, flow direction, and speed. Although the deepest waters in the North Atlantic originate in the Antarctic Ocean, most of its cold, dense water comes from Arctic Ocean waters that spill over between Norway and Greenland, then flow southwestward into the Labrador Sea. In its early history, currents in the North Atlantic were perhaps more modest than they are today. With the opening of the Labrador Sea and subsidence of the Grand Banks, however, a dominant southward flow of cold Arctic waters, ice melt, and recycled tropical waters developed in the northwest Atlantic.

1.3 Circulation in the Atlantic Ocean.

In balance with these southward movements of cold Arctic waters, warm tropical surface waters flow northward and eastward in the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift.²⁴ Together, these opposing currents underlie perhaps the largest heat exchanger on the planet, and result in remarkable differences in the ecosystems of the northwest and northeast Atlantic. In the northwest Atlantic, only the deep waters are warm; the surface waters are very cold. In stark contrast, both the deep and surface waters of the northeast Atlantic are relatively warm, and northern Europe owes its benign climate to this alone. Nowhere else on earth do such warm waters flow so far toward the poles. Beneath the surface of the ocean, the climate is no less remarkable. Coastal Iceland and Norway, despite their northern latitude (60-65° north latitude) have warm waters and ice-free oceans year round. Newfoundland and Labrador waters experience ice as far south as 40° north latitude, about the same latitude as the beaches of northern California.

Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift

By the time the Gulf Stream was set northward by the uplifted Panama Isthmus, the Arctic land bridge that had linked North America, Greenland, and Scandinavia had disappeared.²⁵ As the salty waters of the North Atlantic Drift cooled, they became heavier and sank, mixing with deeper waters from the Arctic shelves. The cold (-1°C) and dense water formed in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea spilled over into the Labrador Sea west of Greenland, becoming the source of most of the deep water of the Atlantic.

The exchange of cooled Arctic water for warmer Gulf Stream waters is the key to the ample productivity of the North Atlantic. The exchange makes the northern waters warmer overall, but even more importantly, results in nutrient enrichment through a natural fertilizer pump into the sterile surface Arctic waters.²⁶

At present, the Gulf Stream off the Florida Peninsula carries 25 times as much water (19 million cubic metres per second) as all the rivers of the world combined.²⁷ Along the Florida coast, the Gulf Stream is 80 kilometres wide and nearly half a kilometre deep. This massive jet of tropical water flows north from the Florida Straits for thousands of kilometres, and then, partly because of the Coriolis force²⁸ and partly because of its collision with the massive Grand Banks and the opposing Labrador Current, strikes eastward across the North Atlantic. The Gulf Stream becomes more diffuse as it travels east: parts of this North Atlantic Drift strike north and then back east off Iceland, while other branches flow south towards the coast of Africa. However, the main Drift moves ceaselessly eastward towards Scandinavia and the Barents Sea. Eventually, its waters cool in the vast Norwegian-Greenland Sea, then sink and are recycled back to the south once again as Atlantic deep waters. These waters are dense from salt and cold, but less so than the seafloor-hugging Antarctic waters that flow as far north as 35° north latitude beneath the deep, southward-flowing waters from the Arctic. The Antarctic and Arctic flows pass each other, moving in opposite directions, in the deep mid-Atlantic near the equator. The Arctic waters finally mix with fresher surface waters from the Antarctic in the South Atlantic at 50-60° south latitude. The full cycle from polar to polar region takes about 1000 years.²⁹

ORIGIN OF THE FISHES

The Age of Fishes occurred in the Devonian period, 345-405 million years ago, when North America was fused to Europe and Africa.³⁰ At that time there were two large landmasses - northern Laurasia (modern North America, parts of Europe, and Asia) and southern Gondwanaland (South America, Africa, India, and Australia) - separated by an ocean that stretched around the globe. Many types of fishes first appeared in the fossil record during the Devonian. Others were well established before that time: many specialized forms of the three main types of fishes - Cyclostomes (lampreys and hagfish), Selachians (sharks and rays), and pre-Teleosts (bony fishes) - were already present in the world’s oceans. Only a few of these early fish species survived to modern times. Early nonparasitic Cyclostomes have modern descendants in the parasitic lampreys and hagfishes. Many sharks and rays exist now in much the same form as they did in the Devonian, and some other modern Selachian species, such as the monkfish (Lophius americanus), can be traced back 150 million years. A few ancient bony fishes also survived, such as the living fossil coelocanth of the Indian Ocean, freshwater forms of the sturgeons (Acipemeriformes spp.), the North American bowfin (Amia calva), and garpikes (Lepisoteus spp.). These early bony fishes also gave rise to the modern Teleost fishes in the late Cretaceous period, 75 million years ago, which in turn led to the evolution of most modern types of fishes.³¹

The cooling of the North Atlantic over the past 40 million years was part of a great change in ecosystems worldwide. The fate of older, warm-water-adapted species in the North Atlantic is unknown, but many presumably perished. The greatest biological changes in the North Atlantic, however, were yet to come.

A seminal event for the North Atlantic was the emergence of the Panama Isthmus and the reorganization of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift between 12 million and 3.5 million years ago. This was followed closely by the sinking of the Bering land bridge that joined Siberia to Alaska. The Bering Strait opened a western door to a northwest passage with waters sufficiently warm to allow migration of cold-water species.

The older and larger North Pacific has been an evolutionary engine for marine species³² - a storehouse of cold-water fishes and the source of many fish, animal, and plant species of the present-day Arctic and North Atlantic communities.³³ The North Pacific houses more endemic families of fishes (at least twenty-one)³⁴ than the North Atlantic (which has none), and more endemic species of fishes (more than sixty, compared to the North Atlantic’s twenty).³⁵ The differences in species abundance between the North Pacific and Atlantic are even greater with crustaceans: the North Pacific has at least one hundred endemic species of crustaceans, whereas the Atlantic has a mere eight or ten. With the opening of the Bering Strait, this great storehouse of cold-water-adapted species had access to an entirely new home in the North Atlantic.³⁶

As the Bering land bridge sank beneath the sea, the North Pacific unleashed its influence on the North Atlantic. Many species migrated east, among them some that would dramatically change the young ecosystems: capelin and redfish, shrimp and snow crab, and lesser-known species of sculpins, alligatorfish, and seasnails all originated in the Pacific. Some fish species achieved much greater abundance and importance in their new home than they had in their native North Pacific. A good example is capelin: while it is not unimportant in the North Pacific, it has neither the abundance nor the seeming monopoly on the small pelagic fish niche that it does in much of the North Atlantic. Invertebrates also migrated from the Pacific to the North Atlantic. Of particular note are the shrimp, including the Pandalid (the so-called northern or ice shrimp) and the less well-known Crangid and Spirontocarid shrimp. There are 88 species of these types of shrimp in the North Pacific, but only six in the North Atlantic.³⁷ The few that made their way to the North Atlantic have, like capelin, achieved great abundance. The Chionocete crabs are also of Pacific origin - of four species that occur in the North Pacific, only the cold-loving snow crab made it to the North Atlantic, where it has thrived. Why this species migrated and survived to the present day, while others did not, is difficult to answer. Perhaps it was the cold environment, perhaps a bit of luck. Even some of the large species of kelp (Laminaria spp.) and eelgrass (Zostera spp.), known to shelter young fish in Newfoundland bays, came from the North Pacific.

A second source of marine species was the Arctic Ocean. A few species came south and stayed as the North Atlantic cooled. Others ventured south seasonally or during cold years, but then retreated north. Notable among these were the ice-pupping seals (harp and hooded), but several species of invertebrates, such as marine butterflies (known to Newfoundland and Labrador fishermen as slub), and a few fishes, such as the Arctic cod, also came south. Overall, however, few truly Arctic species made the North Atlantic their home and their contribution to the North Atlantic ecosystem was modest compared to that of the North Pacific.

1.4 Time lines, periods, epochs, and noted physical developments in the earth's history and the evolution of fishes.

Compared with other oceans and large freshwater ecosystems, the North Atlantic is not rich in fish species – the present-day count is only about 188 in total. By comparison, there are hundreds of species of rockfish alone in the North Pacific and perhaps 500 species of a single fish family in Lake Malawi in Africa. Many fish families have very limited distributions in the North Atlantic. For example, sculpins (Cottidae), alligatorfish and poachers (Agonidae), seasnails (Liparidae), and eelpouts (Zoarcidae) are widespread in the deep waters of the North and South Pacific, but have limited ranges in the Atlantic. The simplest notion of why the Pacific has much wider distributions of species is that ecosystems become richer over time, and the North Atlantic is simply too young an ocean to be so richly endowed. Additionally, the North Atlantic may also be a more severe environment and more homogeneous than other oceans or lakes, both of which could limit diversity. Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and so it is in the North Atlantic: although the number of species in its simpler ecosystems may be fewer, they can achieve great abundance. This truth is reflected in what is known as Theinemann’s Law (see Chapter 2).

Origin of Cod

Gadiform fish (codlike fish, referred to as gadoids) first appear in the fossil record about 40-50 million years ago.³⁸ Gadoids were not important fishes then, and most were small and deepwater fishes of the expansive southern oceans. Evolution often requires isolation, and the cooling temperatures and falling sea levels worldwide opened the door for cod evolution in the North Atlantic.³⁹ The eastern part of the North Atlantic in the North Sea became isolated from warmer waters, and gadoids first appeared as dominant fishes there.⁴⁰

About 10 million years ago, the first large gadoids appeared in the North Sea; by 5 million years ago, the modern Atlantic cod, haddock, and pollock (or saithe) were all present in European waters. The modern cod are among the few fishes whose evolutionary home is the continental shelves of the North Atlantic.⁴¹ From their beginnings in the European waters around the North Sea, cod likely spread to Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, and Newfoundland, and then south into the cool waters of coastal eastern North America. It was here, within the past 5-10 million years, that the modern gadoid fishes came into their own, and evolved to exploit and dominate the new boreal and subarctic ecosystems of the North Atlantic. More will be said about cod and their evolution in Chapter 2.

ICE AGES

Environmental changes associated with the last deglaciation had profound effects on the evolution ofbiotic communities. During glacial stages, species were physically forced southward by glacial ice.

— R.W. GRAHAM AND J.I. MEAD, Environmental Fluctuations and Evolution of Mammalian Faunas During the Last Deglaciation in North America 1987

A general cooling trend in the earths surface temperatures over the past 10 million years, with intermittent ice ages and sea level changes, helped to shape the modern ecosystems of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Grand Banks. The ice ages of the past few million years resulted in severe changes in the physical properties of the Newfoundland and Labrador ecosystems. During glacial periods, much of the Grand Banks and adjacent continental shelf were either covered in ice or reemerged above sea level. Water temperatures were colder, seas levels perhaps 100 metres lower than they had been, and the currents that pumped productivity into these ecosystems may have slowed or even stopped altogether.⁴² Most coastal ecosystems within the bays were periodically smothered by ice and obliterated. Many species relied on these habitats for spawning or juvenile habitat, and these populations would have been eradicated or displaced.

1.5 Relative temperature changes during the Tertiary and Quaternary periods (the past 63 million years), showing the recent cooling and the ice ages.

It is not possible to know if the ecosystems and species distributions prior to the Wisconsin glaciation, the last great ice age, were similar to those we know today. Perhaps they were - we can be reasonably sure that the same species have been here at least for the past few million years. But ecosystems perturbed or changed by climate may not always regenerate themselves in exactly the same way, and there is no certainty that identical configurations reoccurred during successive interglacial periods. All we really know is what developed since the last one.

Present day ecosystems of Newfoundland and Labrador, and of the North Atlantic, developed during the ice ages. No one knows exactly how many ice ages occurred before the last one - ironically, glaciers tend to erase all traces of previous ice ages.⁴³ Glaciation has likely occurred many times at regular intervals in the earth’s recent history. Cold periods have been interspersed with warmer periods for at least the past 10 million years, but extensive glaciation began only about 2.5 million years ago.⁴⁴ Since then, the earth has alternated between glacial and interglacial periods at regular intervals of 41,000 and 23,000 years. During the most recent 700,000-900,000 years, a longer 100,000-year cycle has also been evident.⁴⁵ These cycles relate to changes in the earth’s orbit, which cause temperature changes at the poles, especially in summer.

The most recent glacial period, the Wisconsin, began about 70,000 years ago.⁴⁶ After three ice advances, the Wisconsin finally retreated about 10,000-12,000 years ago. The extent and spreading patterns of the glaciers is a matter of debate among geologists.⁴⁷ A common misconception is that the glaciers spread from the north and slowly engulfed southern regions like the island of Newfoundland. It is more likely, however, that Wisconsin ice spread from several inland centres in Newfoundland, and it may have coalesced with the margins of the much larger Laurentide continental glacier in the Strait of Belle Isle area. Even considering the least likely extent of Wisconsin glaciation, the ice sheets were sufficiently large to overwhelm pre-existing terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. One to two kilometres of ice built up over much of the region,⁴⁸ its shear weight and abrasion displacing most sediments and soils. A few ice-free mountain regions and coasts may have persisted through the glaciation,⁴⁹ but thick ice scoured most bays and inlets. There is some opinion that glaciers created the bays and fjords of Newfoundland, but that is unlikely: as large and heavy as the glaciers were, they only rubbed the surface of an already strongly featured and much more ancient landscape.⁵⁰ The ice flows tended to follow existing major land and sea features, thus cleaning off, polishing, and reemphasizing previous land- and sea-scapes. This is not to minimize the effects of the glaciers – they left lasting imprints on both land and at sea, cleaning the slate of terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The weight of the ice forced even the oldest and hardest continental rocks downward into the crust. After the ice melted, the land rebounded – on the coast of Labrador, old beaches can still be seen, now stranded 150 metres above sea level. And although land-based, the effects of the glaciers were felt far out to sea.

The seaward extent of the ice remains controversial.⁵¹ There are two basic schools of thought. The first espouses that glaciation was minimal: under this scenario, the ice sheets barely spanned the bays and did not extend very far to sea. The second thinks that the ice sheets extended well out to sea and covered most of the Banks. There is evidence for both points of view. The minimalist view is supported by evidence of nonglaciated areas in Labrador and in western Newfoundland.⁵² On the other hand, on Hamilton Bank off Labrador, there is evidence of seaward extension of the ice sheets to the Bank’s edge.⁵³ Moraines near the seaward edge of Hamilton Bank and in adjacent channels suggest the glaciers extended far offshore. On the Grand Banks things are less clear, but sediment evidence suggests that ice may have covered the shoreward third of the Banks.⁵⁴

1.6 Seabed on outer Hamilton Bank showing evidence of glaciation. Photo reprinted from Hamilton Banky Marine Geologyy Fillon, R.H., Labrador Shelf postglacial sediment dynamics and paleo-oceanography, 20, 7-25, 1976, with permission from Elsevier.

Nearer to shore on the continental shelf, glacial ice pushed seaward, extending from the land into the sea. The Grand Banks were glaciated by ice moving radially seaward from the central part of the Avalon Peninsula.⁵⁵ The moving ice gouged deep troughs through bays and along faults roughly parallel to shore as kilometre-thick ice flows dug into the soft sedimentary rocks laid down shoreward of the hardest rocks of the Banks. Southward-flowing currents added an additional push. Troughs as deep as 500 metres can be found from northern Labrador and the Hopedale Channel through the St. Anthony Basin and the Funk Island Deep to the Avalon Channel. In places, the ice flowed farther seaward through cross-shelf troughs. Just south of Hamilton Bank, the Hawke Channel was scoured over 500 metres deep to the shelf edge, and terminal glacial moraines marking the extent of the ice can be found there. Troughs in the Hawke Channel became deep enough to escape the cold surface waters of the Labrador Current. Much later, Atlantic waters in the troughs would provide warmed highways for cross-shelf cod migration, away from the icy Current, and would become key areas for juvenile fish.⁵⁶ The Hawke Channel consequently became one of the most important fishing areas in the North Atlantic, a biological garden of zooplankton, shrimp, snow crab, capelin, cod, and the deeper water redfish and Greenland halibut.

1.7 Grand Banks and Newfoundland-Labrador sea level and land-sea changes since the Wisconsin ice age that began to retreat about 10,000 years ago. White areas are regions which are now submerged, but were previously above sea level. (Compilation of data from several sources.)

The amount of ice in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans was staggering. Even if land ice were only a few hundred metres to a kilometre thick, that is many times as deep as most of the Grand Banks. With so much seawater frozen into ice, it was inevitable that sea levels would fall. At the glacial maximum, sea levels were up to 200 metres lower than at present. As a result, the seaward half of the Grand Banks was above water: frozen flat islands off a glaciered coast. These islands formed an archipelago that extended from the Flemish Cap to Georges Bank off New England, with the largest island centred on the Southeast Shoal of the Grand Banks. As the glaciers receded and sea levels rose over the past 10,000 years, the archipelago slowly slipped beneath the sea. On the Grand Banks, the last vestiges of hilly peaks of these islands, the Virgin Rocks, still break water, and the Southeast Shoal is in places less than 40 metres deep, over 200 nautical miles (360 kilometres) from shore.

The extent of the sea ice in North Atlantic and Arctic waters between northern Europe and North America during the last glaciation is also controversial. Early investigations suggested that the winter ice margin stretched as far south as 45° north latitude (St. John’s lies at 47.5° north latitude).⁵⁷ However, more recent studies suggest that, as a result of warm-water drift northward and eastward across the North Atlantic, ice-free areas may have reached much farther north in the central and eastern Atlantic and even to the Barents Sea.⁵⁸ Such areas would have provided refuges and feeding areas for fishes even during the glacial maximum. However, on the western side of the Atlantic, sea ice likely covered much of the area from Newfoundland to Iceland each winter.

However great the extent of the ice coverage in the North Atlantic, there is no doubt that sea temperatures, salinities, and currents were profoundly influenced by glaciation.⁵⁹ The Gulf Stream and Labrador Current were flowing long before the recent glaciations, but the presence of ice altered these currents and may have stopped them altogether at times. Over the period from 160,000 to 10,000 years ago, and since the end of the last ice age, temperatures and currents changed quickly and regularly, and differed greatly from their present configuration. The Labrador Current may have been diverted eastward from the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador during and after the last Wisconsin glaciation.⁶⁰ If so, warmer-water refuges for cod and other species may have persisted south of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

1.8 Extent of winter ice cover and changes in sea surface temperatures (degrees Celsius) during the last glacial maximum (data from Ruddiman 1987). Note that the Newfoundland and Labrador region was covered with continental shelf and sea ice, and the North Atlantic suffered severe sea temperature declines.

THE LAST 1000 YEARS

The variations in the ocean and climate of the past 1000 years have been relatively minor compared to those during the ice ages - Newfoundland and Labrador marine ecosystems have experienced far more extreme conditions in the past than they do today. Nevertheless, the variations of the last 1000 years are not irrelevant to ocean productivity or to fishes. At the very least, and of great interest, they have determined the state of the ecosystems during the relatively brief modern period of fisheries exploitation.

Periods of warm and cold temperatures have alternated since the last glacial retreat. Reconstructions of temperature indicate that conditions in the northern hemisphere were relatively mild 1000 years ago, but a slow cooling took place over the next 500 years. The little ice age occurred from the 1500s to the mid-1800s, with strong regional variations. In the Newfoundland and Labrador region, the later 1600s were cold, as was the beginning of the 1700s. An abrupt warming then appears to have taken place in the third decade of the 1700s; it lasted until the early 1800s, when cooling again occurred and continued until at least midcentury. The 1900s brought generally warmer conditions that peaked in most areas from 1920-1960. The only constant has been variability, with both short-term and, more importantly, long-term (periods of up to a century) episodes of warmer and colder years. Recent warming, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, has made the past century the warmest on record for many thousands of years, and the rate of warming is now very high.⁶¹

The retreat of the last glaciers did not end the presence of ice on the Newfoundland and Labrador coast. Ocean ice off Labrador and northeastern Newfoundland remains a key feature of these regions and greatly influences the marine ecosystems. There are several different kinds of ice. The oldest and best known in North Atlantic waters are icebergs, large chunks of long-frozen and compacted precipitation from the high Arctic. Most icebergs come from Greenland, which has remained covered in ice since the Wisconsin glaciation period. New ice formation increases the weight of the ice sheet while gravity forces movement, with the result that icebergs calve in huge broken chunks from the Disko Bay glacier area of western Greenland. Like a line of moving white islands, icebergs are delivered by prevailing currents across to Baffin Island and southward along the Labrador coast. During their journey, their tracks are influenced by winds and pure fancy - their movements are not totally predictable. Some fishermen believe that icebergs attract fish, presumably because cold, fresh meltwater creates local water mass boundaries where plankton accumulate. In some years, there are many icebergs; in others, few. At times they travel as far south as 40° north latitude, about the same latitude as northern California or the Mediterranean Sea. In most years, even the largest icebergs melt in the warming waters of the southern Grand Banks, but they may occasionally venture farther. In the spring of 1912, a fleet of icebergs moved across the shipping lane well south of the Grand Banks and into history. Here the Titanic met its fate - but such is the variability of the North Atlantic.

1.9 Reconstructed temperatures over the past 2000 years. The black line is the decadal average of the original data. The red line is the upper bound and the blue line is the lower bound of average temperatures with the high frequency variation removed. Data from Moberg et al (2005).

Sea ice has none of the glamour of icebergs. It forms each year as a result of the freezing of the cold and relatively fresh waters of the Labrador Current. There are many types of sea ice: local first-year ice that melts each year; multiyear ice from farther north; landfast ice that freezes in the bays and differs from other types of ice because its forming waters are less saline; and larger pans of open-ocean ice formed from saltier waters. Sea ice is very important to local climates and ocean ecosystems: it limits heat transfer between the atmosphere and ocean, protects the waters from wind, may influence fish plankton and fish distributions, and provides the seasonal breeding habitat for hooded and harp seals, the top predators and most numerous marine mammals in these ecosystems.

1.10 Iceberg in Trinity Bay in 2005. Photograph by Tom Clenche.

1.11 Sea ice in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence in winter 1984. Photograph by the author.

1.12 Sea ice extent in the northwest Atlantic in spring and summer.

North Atlantic Oscillation

A key feature of the North Atlantic climate is an atmospheric pressure feature called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).⁶² The NAO is the difference in atmospheric pressure between the Azores Islands high pressure and Icelandic low pressure systems, and links the climate and ocean conditions off Newfoundland and Labrador with the overall climate of the North Atlantic. When the NAO is positive, the flows of the Labrador Current tend to weaken, bringing warmer conditions to the continental shelf and Grand Banks. When the NAO is negative, the Labrador Current strengthens and colder conditions prevail. The variations in the NAO are related to many climatic, oceanographic, and ecological features in the marine ecosystems of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Grand Banks, including iceberg flows, ocean temperatures, the strength of the Labrador Current, and the distribution and biology of many species. It provides a useful index of ocean conditions related to warm and cold periods in North Atlantic and Newfoundland and Labrador waters.⁶³

1.13 The North Atlantic Oscillation pressure difference between the Azores high and Icelandic low and other physical variables for the Grand Banks region (data from various sources). The ice index is a relative indicator of maximum ice extent, and sea temperature (degrees Celsius) and salinity (psu) are average measures from oceanographic station 27 near Cape Spear, Newfoundland.

Labrador Current

The currents that impact the marine ecosystems of Newfoundland and Labrador are part of a larger system of climate and ocean variation that spans the North Atlantic and comprises part of global circulation. The southward flowing Labrador Current dominates the oceanographic regime of the coastal areas of the Newfoundland and Labrador shelves, the Grand Banks, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Its influence can be felt as far south as New England. The heart of the current is stunningly cold, at -1.7°C (seawater freezes at about -2°C), and covers most of the continental shelf off Labrador.

There are two main parts to the Labrador Current, with different sources. The larger offshore branch results from the spin of the West Greenland Current, driven by cold Arctic flows in the Irminger Current along eastern Greenland. These flows are strengthened but also warmed and salted by offshoots of the North Atlantic Drift. The offshore branch carries ten times more water and is saltier and warmer than the inshore branch. The offshore branch skirts the continental shelf and the Grand Banks, and confronts the Gulf Stream southeast of the Banks. In a clash of the titans, the Gulf Stream turns east, while the lesser Labrador Current curls back to the north, reinforcing the counter-clockwise gyre in the Labrador Sea and eventually completing the circuit in the West Greenland Current.

The inshore branch of the Labrador Current is colder and fresher than the offshore branch. Its origins are in the Canada Current from the high Arctic, and along the way it is reinforced with freshwater inputs from Hudson Bay and many small rivers.⁶⁴ It meets little opposition on its journey south. It hugs the northeast coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Avalon Channel, chilling both sea and land, turns west along the south coast of the island, penetrating Placentia Bay to its head and out again, then ploughs westward into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Some of the Labrador waters join cold waters flowing out of the Gulf and move farther south onto the Scotian Shelf, influencing the coastal plant and animal communities as far south as Cape Cod. The Labrador Current carries only one-tenth of the flow of the Gulf Stream, but still more than twice the water of all the rivers of the world combined.

Together, the inshore and offshore branches of the Labrador Current force a counter-clockwise gyre in the Labrador Sea, with the ice-cold and fresher inshore branch extending to the edge of the shelf break, and the saltier offshore branch holding position over deeper waters off the shelf. Steep gradients between these flows result in nutrient-rich waters being brought to the surface near the shelf break.⁶⁵

If Labrador Current waters flowed to the bottom of the continental shelf, the marine ecosystems of Newfoundland and Labrador would be very different and far less productive. Labrador Current waters are relatively fresh; they do not sink deeper than 150-200 metres despite their cold temperatures.⁶⁶ Much of the Grand Banks and other banks are shallower than this, so Labrador Current waters dominate from surface to bottom. In the troughs and deeper basins, the warmer, saltier, and richer Atlantic Ocean waters cannot be displaced. Atlantic waters have year-round temperatures of 3-4°C, with higher salinities (34-35 psu) and nutrient contents than the Labrador Current.⁶⁷ In areas of mixing, Atlantic waters enrich the nutrient content of the more sterile surface waters. Enrichment occurs primarily along the shelf edge and in the cross-shelf channels such as the Hawke and Hopedale channels. The coverage of the Grand Banks by Labrador water varies from year to year. This influences not only productivity, but also the extent of the Grand Banks with conditions favourable to cod and other species. A few organisms have evolved to live in the coldest waters, but only a very small proportion of ocean species can live at -1.7°C.

1.14 Surface currents of the North Atlantic. The inset shows the probable currents 6000 years ago (Data from various sources; inset data from Fillon (1976)). B.P. indicates years before present.

Ocean waters move not only in currents, but also in tides that slosh back and forth in response to the gravitational pulls of the earth and moon on the water. Tides influence the flows and mixing of water masses, especially in shallow coastal areas, which in turn affect the ecology of many species. Tides in the North Atlantic run counter-clockwise around a central point about halfway between Newfoundland and the Azores. This rotation results in more or less synchronous tides from northern Labrador to southern Newfoundland. The Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the other hand, has its own tidal rotation: tides on the west coast of Newfoundland are four to five hours out of synch with those of the rest of the Newfoundland and Labrador coast. In general, tides in Newfoundland and Labrador are small. The tidal range in most areas is less than 1.7 metres, with ranges over 2 metres occurring only in a few places such as Placentia Bay and northern Labrador. Exceptions to this can occur where tides force water into confined areas - such as Swift Current in Placentia Bay, where tidal ranges may approach 3 metres. Nowhere in Newfoundland and Labrador can the tides match those of Ungava Bay to the north or the Bay of Fundy to the south, where tidal heights can reach 10 metres.

The Grand Banks and adjacent continental shelves around Newfoundland and Labrador formed as a result of over a hundred million years of continental drift. The past forty million years of cooling has culminated in ice ages that radically changed the geography and the ocean climate of the North Atlantic. The closing of the Panama Isthmus and the opening of the Bering Strait resulted in major changes in ocean circulation and the distribution of species. Of primary importance to the developing ecosystems of the North Atlantic were the migration of species from the species-rich North Pacific and the evolution of the gadoids in the North Atlantic. Newfoundland and Labrador marine ecosystems house only a relatively small number of species, and during the ice ages, have had their slates repeatedly wiped clean. Despite these handicaps, and perhaps in part because of them, these ecosystems produced an abundance of marine life the likes of which the world has seldom seen.

1.15 Cross-section of the Labrador Current across an inner channel and outer bank. The scale on the right shows water temperatures in degrees Celsius. (Compilation of data from several sources.)

NOTES

1 Travin and Pechenik (1963, 48-52) described the earliest developments of the Soviet Union fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador waters in the 1950s: "Soviet commercial activities in the Northwest Atlantic began in August, 1956, after the large trawler Sverdlovsk discovered great stocks of Sebastes mentella [redfish] near the southwestern slope of the Fleming Cap Bank… By 1960 the Flemish Cap region was no longer most important; the most intensive fishing sites became the North Newfoundland Bank (3K), the Hamilton Bank (2J) and the southeastern slope of the Grand Newfoundland Bank (3N)…the average catches of Soviet trawlers per unit of effort in the Northwest Atlantic over the years were very high…they considerably exceeded the catches in the Barents Sea." One reason for this was that the Russians fished the overwintering and spawning concentrations of cod off Newfoundland and Labrador, but not in the Barents Sea. More will be said of this in later chapters.

2 Anderson (1986) provided a detailed description of the development of the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics.

3 Wilson (1966) asked an important question: Did the Atlantic Ocean close and then reopen? It helped to resolve what earlier geologists had observed in Newfoundland and Labrador and in North America, Europe, and North Africa: that the joining of rocks in central Newfoundland and the ophiolites of western Newfoundland made little sense without this theory. Much of this has now been accepted as a part of tectonic science, in large part as a result of the work of Newfoundland geologist Hank Williams, working at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.

4 For more detail on the geological history of Newfoundland, see Hodych et al. (1989). I drive over the fault on my trip to my cabin at Terra Nova Lake.

5 Keen et al. (1990) provided details of the separation, subsidence, and sedimentation of the