Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

The next advancement came in the form of the steam engine, already gaining popularity in Europe. Primarily, new fishing technology begins in Europe and makes its way to North America slowly. Many Newfoundland fishermen were still using sail power well into the 1950s, while the Europeans had been using steam engines for nearly 70 years. In 1830s England, steam-powered trawlers called “bottom draggers,” which dragged nets across the ocean floor to catch fish, turned the small fishing town of Hull into a major port. The trawler design was improved again in 1892 with the Scottish-built “otter trawl” which became the “prototype of all modern bottom draggers” (131).

While the British developed steam engine trawlers, the North Americans relied on sail-powered schooners. The fisheries of the Georges Bank near Massachusetts and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland relied on sails for another 30 years. A group of Canadian fishermen even convinced the government to ban the expansive use of draggers in the 1920s. However, technological advances never stop for long, and the second big idea changed everything.

This idea came from a New Yorker named Clarence Birdseye, who spent some time in Labrador, Canada, in 1910. There, he discovered the effectiveness of freezing to preserve fresh vegetables over the winter. Over the 1920s, he experimented with methods of freezing and founded the General Seafoods Company in 1925. He started with frozen groundfish and quickly moved on to other meats. Birdseye improved his frozen food technology with a quick-drying process in 1946.

The introduction of freezing changed the landscape of cod fishing, as the American and British markets increasingly demanded fresh fish rather than salted and cured fish. The increased productivity of fishing fleets also led to larger catches, thus increasing the need for ways to preserve the fish. This, combined with the introduction of a filleting machine to New England in 1921, led to the creation and selling of frozen fish fillets. By the 1950s, the Gloucester-based seafood company Gorton’s had made fish sticks and other frozen fish fillets an enormous commercial success.

Finally, these several advancements came together in a factory ship during World War II. These massive trawlers were more stable in rough waters, with huge decks that made space for the entire fishing and freezing process, leading to larger cod catches through the 1950s. Now, however, local fishermen began to worry that the long-touted inexhaustible supply might be depleted.

The British government began to consider that overfishing might be a problem in 1902, seven years after Huxley’s death. By this point, the British had already shifted their enormous fishing fleets from the North Sea to the waters near Iceland. Iceland had been under Danish rule since 1397, and had been effectively cut off from trade with the rest of Europe since the 1500s. Their diet was based on fish, mostly cold-dried cod. When the Danish allowed them to open trade in 1855, they started selling salt cod to foreign markets. When the British fishing fleets returned to Icelandic waters in the early 1900s, an 80-year conflict began.

Few people discussed the concerning fact that the steam-powered trawlers of the British fishing fleet had been so effective they had depleted their own North Sea stock inside a decade. Now they took that same fleet to Iceland, and the Icelanders could either attempt to ban foreign fishing, or they could upgrade their fishing techniques to compete and make a profit for themselves. They chose the second option: By 1915, they owned a fleet of 20 enormous trawlers.

In the 1930s, in the small fishing town of Grindavik, a fisherman named Tomas Thorvaldsson had an idea to join this increased productivity. There were few harbors, and most Icelandic towns did not have direct access to water. Instead, fishermen took small, wheeled boats over the black volcanic rock to the shore every morning and hauled them back at night. They could not do this with steam-powered trawlers. Tomas and his friends had the idea of digging a trench, eventually resulting in a tiny harbor, allowing Tomas to buy his first trawler. Soon, he could buy a second, larger one. Before long, he was a businessman.

The success of trawler fleets in Iceland profoundly changed their economy, creating a new entrepreneurial class in Iceland as it had in New England in the 1640s. Their success grew when, during World War I, the British commandeered the ships of their fishing fleet to serve in the war, leaving the Icelanders to fish their own waters without competition. During World War II, fish prices soared, and Icelanders made enormous profits, paid in American dollars to facilitate the business Iceland did while housing American troops on the island. Then, in 1944, Iceland gained full independence from Denmark and became a fully-recognized nation for the first time, leading to a war for cod.

Now that Iceland was an independent nation, they could control their most valuable resource, cod. In 1950, they announced a territorial limit of four miles off its shoreline. Though this seems modest by modern standards, the standard of the time was the concept of open seas. A three-mile limit had been established in 1822, upheld by France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and England, but it was rarely defended, and many other nations questioned its validity. Then in 1945, President Harry Truman decided to maintain control of the waters around the US by declaring that it owned the rights to the resources of its entire continental shelf. This was unprecedented, but became a popular claim for nationalists in Latin America as well.

Emboldened by this development, Iceland extended its territorial limit to 12 miles offshore in 1958. The British government formally protested and insisted that the Icelandic government would not dare to use force against British fishing vessels. They were wrong, and the first of the three “Cod Wars” began. After the official withdrawal deadline in August 1958, the Icelandic Coast Guard spotted 37 British ships in their waters. The Coast Guard possessed only seven ships and could not effectively fight the British. However, they harassed the fleet endlessly, hampering their fishing efforts. The British finally relented in negotiations in 1961.

The second war came 10 years later when, in 1971, Iceland extended their limit to 50 miles. Both England and West Germany objected loudly in the International Court of Law. This second war was short, but dangerous. In the intervening years, the Icelandic Coast Guard had developed new methods, including an effective way to cut trawl wires used in net dragging, cutting 84 British and German nets and costing them enormous amounts of money. Additionally, the conflict developed “into dodgem cars on the high seas” (165), as the Coast Guard even rammed and disabled vessels. Finally, the Icelandic Coast Guard “fired live shells across the bow of a British tug” in March and “blew a hole in the hull of a British trawler” (165) in May. Once again, the British agreed to recognize the new limiting zone.

Meanwhile, a 1973 UN meeting led to 34 nations supporting the idea of a 200-mile exclusion zone off all national shores. This idea was endorsed by primarily Latin American, African, and Asian nations, all trying to defend against further European encroachment. In Europe, only Iceland and Norway supported the idea. This led to one last conflict when Iceland put the idea into practice, claiming a 200-mile zone in 1975. This was the shortest Cod War, lasting only five months, but included 35 ramming incidents and intense arguments in international diplomacy. The British once again appealed to International Law. Several groups, including West Germany, suggested that the British could avoid the conflict if they simply ate other kinds of fish rather than insisting on cod. The British refused this suggestion. However, the entire European community elected to adopt the 200-mile exclusion zone for all nations, effectively ending England’s petition.

Tomas Thorvaldsson had become a successful businessman with a trawler company and processing plant when the 200-mile zone was enacted. He became a member of a government board that controlled fish exports. Most other nations also declared 200-mile zones, meaning that almost every fishing ground fell within a specific nation’s control. 

Soon, Iceland discovered they needed to regulate their own fleet more carefully. In 1984, they introduced fishing quotas per species per boat. In 1995, the restrictions tightened further as fears mounted over depleted stocks. These limits shrank Tomas’s business significantly, from processing over 2,000 tons of saltfish per year to only 300-400 tons. Standing in his office in 1995, he wonders aloud if they should have returned to the traditional methods.