Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Giovanni Caboto was a Genovese explorer, best known by his Anglicized name John Cabot because he was commissioned by the King of England to search for a route west to Asia. He embarked on his voyage in 1497, five years after Columbus found the Caribbean on his own search. Europeans at the time were desperate to find a faster and easier way to reach Asia, particularly China, and their spice trade.

Though Cabot did not find a path to Asia, he arrived on a “vast, rocky coastline that was ideal for salting and drying fish, by a sea that was teeming with cod” (28). He claimed it for England, noting while he was there the many Basque fishing vessels in the area. Thus, Cabot revealed the secret of the Basque fishing grounds and opened the way for European settlers to sail to North America. This discovery changed the course of European colonialist history and the fate of the North American cod stock, highlighting the connections between natural resources, trade, and colonialism.

John Adams, Founding Father and second President of the United States, was “America’s most underrated founding father” (99). Additionally, his impact on the New England fish trade cannot be overstated. Adams recognized the political and economic value of the cod fishing grounds on the New England coast, particularly on the Georges Bank and Grand Banks, and fought to retain rights over these grounds during peace negotiations at the end of the American Revolution. He did so with opposition from other founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, who believed fishing rights were a minor concern. 

Adams was ultimately successful in securing American rights to fish on the Grand Banks, but it required giving up their navigation rights to the Mississippi River. This caused one of the first major disagreements between the North and South states. This incident underscores the connections between the cod trade and national identity.

Thomas Henry Huxley was a British scientific philosopher who was heavily influenced by the work of Charles Darwin and who, in turn, became enormously influential in issues of commerce and early concepts of overfishing. Huxley argued that nature’s resilience was endless and that, therefore, overfishing was impossible. He stated at the International Fisheries Exhibition that “any tendency to over-fishing will meet with its natural check in the diminution of supply, … this check will always come into operation long before anything like permanent exhaustion has occurred” (122). He believed that nature would automatically keep human interference under control. His ideas influenced public policy, particularly in England and Canada, for the next hundred years, leading governments to ignore the warnings of fishermen and encourage less and less restraint as fishing methods advanced.

Of the several important advances in fishing technologies, that of Clarence Birdseye was one of the most crucial, coming at a time when net dragging and steam engines had increased the fish supply far past any group’s ability to sell or consume it all. Clarence Birdseye, a New York native who lived for a winter in Labrador, Canada, experimented with freezing techniques after being inspired by the cold weather in Labrador. He eventually settled on a fast and easy method of freezing fish so that it retained its freshness, rather than being dried. 

This method revolutionized the fish trade because it allowed fisheries to preserve their enormous catches, opened trade up to regions that had never before had access to fresh fish, and paved the way for the popular commercial product, fish sticks. Birdseye’s innovation directly impacted overfishing practices, underscoring the human impact on nature.

Tomas Thorvaldsson was an Icelandic fisherman who witnessed the swift change in fishing technologies during and after WW2. With the advent of net dragging trawls, he decided to modernize his fishing methods, which required digging a small harbor near his fishing town by hand. Eventually, he became an important businessman, with a fleet of fishing ships and a processing plant. 

After Iceland enacted their 200-mile exclusion zone in 1976, he became a member of a government bureau that controlled fish exports, and eventually its president. However, overfishing led to a loss of business, and in 1995 he laments the loss of the old fishing methods, illustrating the ways abundance and scarcity of resources can impact both individual and large-scale financial success.