All fished out

摘要

North Atlantic cod may never recover from the effects of overfishing, forcing us to eat less palatable species such as sea cucumber and jellyfish. Stocks of cod crashed 10 years ago, and a fishing ban was put in place off the east coast of Canada to allow them to recover. But it may be too late, says Alida Bundy from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia: the population dynamics of cod have been altered so severely that they might never reappear in their former numbers. Adult cod prey on species such as herring and mackerel that compete with or eat juvenile cod, she says. It's possible that without a big population of adult cod, the juveniles never get a chance to grow.