Codfish population

[Pangaroo]

Why did the codfish population come back strong in the late 1970's and early 1980's and now it's having a difficult time rebounding ? I remember the bad codfishing in the 1970's , it was probably worse back then than it's now. Codfishermen were so dedicated back then. I remember Freeport Party Boats with 40-50 guys onboard come back with 10 cod for the whole boat. I remember the Starstream 2 went out in 1979 and caught 200 cod on jigs and everybody thought the cod were back. Not long after the cod made a spectacular comeback. It wasn't only the cod back then. Fluke were pretty scarce as well . You caught one in the bay and wow.I remember the fluke being scarce in the early 1970's. Blue fishing was very very popular.

 

[OVERBORED]

200 mile limit.

In the 70s, foreign factory ships worked over our stocks pretty good. After that, we pretty much did it to ourselves.

 

[Pangaroo]

There were enough cod inside 12 miles back in the 1970's that were available to build a new population very rapidly. The cod quotas are very low today , but you know they're catching them anyway and throwing them back dead. They catch big schools of stripers every once in a while and they're thrown back dead, same thing is happening to codfish and it's a major reason why winter flounder stocks will never recover. You shut down commercial fishing for 20 years and everything will bounce back. again and again we've seen what happens when quotas are drastically cut. If it wasn't for PCB the Stripers never would've come back.

 

[OVERBORED]

You shut down commercial fishing and what happens to the fish supply chain? Countless businesses will fail costing billions.

There are cod around but the distance required to catch them along with restrictions make it tough.

Caught 3-6 cod in the NY bight area all spring. Every trip. Not great but worthwhile.

Caught 30cod last September. Had to run 40+ miles. With bait, fuel and everything else cost us $200/man for a bag of fillets.