Pollock vs. Cod

[bmmatala]

The Alaskan Pollock fishery and the Northern Cod fishery described by Kevin Bailey and Paul Grennburg, respectively, were both described as originally to be a rush of resources and a major profit. Although the pollock industry was made to start up because of the crash/fail of the northern cod industry. Both of these fish, pollock and cod are very similar one way being that they are easily caught in large schools of them.Over time the fishers learned where the fish would be and that they are located in large abundances of them at a time which made it very easy for them in the end. Both fish also have a massive span over space, throughout countries. These attributes of the species made the management of the fisheries believe that the populations of the fish were growing exponentially with the amount they were bringing in but it wasn’t. Some differences between the two include that the northern cod industry was said to me “hundreds of years old’ while the pollock industry is pretty young in comparison only making a large appearance around thirty years ago. Another difference is that the cod industry has already collapsed years ago because people were not tracking what they were catching and letting the fish keep a strong population sustainable size, while the pollock industry is at a very good spot as of right now and this is because as described by Bailey in Billion Dollar Fish the pollock in the oceans are being kept at a sustainable population size which is something that was never done for the cod.

[Ron Sheldon]

I agree with your comparison but would question the views of pollock abundance. While there is a lot of science involved in the pollock fishery that was not present in the cod fishery, there is still little trust in catch numbers reported across nations. Where we can control the actions of U.S. based fishing vessels there is no guarantee that everyone is playing fair as highlighted by Bailey’s experience on the Japanese boat.

[faelmore]

I agree with your post and said alot of the same things. However, part of the problem in cod was overestimating what we had. People thought there were much more fish than there were with the cod fishery and thought they were being sustainable too at this age of the fishery. It’s just something to think about.

[hcbass]

I do agree with Ron in that it is hard to say truly how well the Pollock fishery is going because there could very well be people out there not playing as fairly as we believe them to be. this was the challenge with the cod fishery as well since so many people from so many countries fished it until they were kicked out. with so many hands in one pot its hard to keep track.

[Author]

Posts