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Everything now depends on the cod

Despite retaining 70 per cent of the quota, it’s a much smaller pie and even the inshore boats have taken big cuts.

Coming down to visit Theodore aboard the boat that would have dwarfed the small wooden craft he took to Belle Isle 55 years ago, the elder Rufus said, “everyone’s talking about ‘last in first out,’ but I think it’s going to be everyone out.”

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Ern Simms’ phone was ringing off the hook. A polar bear had been spotted on the outskirts of St. Anthony and everyone thought the mayor should know.

“Look, I’m glad to talk but you can’t take my picture because I haven’t got a chance yet to get proper dressed,” said Simms.

The mayor of the town of 2,200 souls at the tip of Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula is waiting on a response by his council to the federal and provincial fisheries ministers that they come to St. Anthony.

The town, which boasts the only Tim Hortons for 450 km, has built a moderately prosperous economy around shrimp.

“Everything now depends on the cod,” said Simms, a retired teacher who works unloading boats through the summer.

But the cod won’t come back quick enough to replace the shrimp, and the rural economies don’t know where to turn in the meantime.

No one even knows what the northern cod stock could be if it does return.

Norway is adjacent to a cod stock that historically was thought to be about the same size as Canada’s northern cod.

Recent warming trends have led that stock to grow and according to Norwegian government figures, in 2016, its fishermen caught 400,000 pounds of cod worth $970 million.

“But our system is more complex than Norway’s, which just relies on one warm current,” said Rose. “… One thing is certain, there will be winners and there will be losers.”