Managed Annihilation by Dean Bavington, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

The commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was once the most successful in the world. When it collapsed in 1992 – causing the largest single-day layoff in Canadian history and irrevocable ecological damage – fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as uncontrolled harvesting and not taking fishermen’s concerns into account as likely culprits. Examining the history of commercial cod fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador from the mid-nineteenth century to the aftermath of the cod moratorium, Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management was itself the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were ostensibly managed by the state, and the fishery has still not recovered nearly twenty years later. Although the collapse of northern cod raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand, predict, and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered – it has simply been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and domesticated cod. | Managed Annihilation by Dean Bavington, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters