Managed Annihilation

An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse

By Dean Bavington
Categories: The Natural World, Natural Resources, Business, Economics & Industry, Environmental Protection & Preservation, Agriculture & Food Production, Environmental Politics & Policy, Science, Canadian Studies
Series: Nature | History | Society
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774817479, 224 pages, May 2010
Paperback : 9780774817486, 224 pages, November 2010
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774817493, 224 pages, January 2011
Buy Direct
View Table of Contents

Table of contents

Foreword: This Is More Difficult Than We Thought / Graeme Wynn

Preface

1 A Sea Swarming with Fish

2 The Birth and Development of Cod Fisheries Management

3 Success through Failure: The Expansion of Management after the Moratorium

4 Socio-Ecological System Description of the Cod Fishery

5 From Managing Fish to Managing Fishermen

6 Managing Cod from Egg to Plate

7 Articulating Management into Cod Fisheries

8 Alternatives to Management and Managerial Ecology

Notes

Bibliography

Index

A provocative account of the annihilation of the legendary Newfoundland cod fishery, this book challenges the idea that we can understand, predict, and control nature without ultimately destroying it.

Description

The Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery was once the most successful commercial fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992, many pointed to failures in management, such as uncontrolled harvesting, as likely culprits. Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management itself was the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were state-managed and still, two decades later, there is no recovery in sight. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered and has been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.

Awards

  • Winner, Outstanding Jacket Design, 2011 AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show
  • Winner, Clio Prize for Canadian History - Atlantic, Canadian Historical Association 2011

Reviews

This book ... is valuable to those seeking a fresh, provocative approach to the northern cod fishery in particular and to natural resource management in general. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

- .A. Hutchings, Dalhousie University

The sorry state of ocean life has led to a new kind of fish story – a lament not for the one that got away but for the countless others that didn't...Dean Bavington...observes that two hundred billion pounds worth of cod were taken from Canada's grand banks before 1992, when the cod simply ran out.

- Elizabeth Kolbert

The sorry state of ocean life has led to a new kind of fish story—a lament not for the one that got away but for the countless others that didn’t…Dean Bavington…observes that two hundred billion pounds’ worth of cod were taken from Canada’s Grand Banks before 1992, when the cod simply ran out.

- Elizabeth Kolbert

Bavington’s critique of existing management approaches is strong, and opens the door to a worthwhile discussion.

- Tracy Yandle, Emory University