The cod in History

A brief History of Portuguese cod fishing

It is thought that the first Portuguese cod fishermen set out from Faial, one of the islands of the Azores archipelago, around the middle of the 14th century.

During the 15th century the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland were frequently visited by Portuguese navigators and fishermen.

With the emergence of the Cantino Planisphere in 1502, navigation became safer, thus increasing the Portuguese presence in the cod banks in those regions, especially of fishermen from Aveiro.

However, there was a radical decline in the fisheries during the rule of the Filipes of Spain in Portugal (1580-1640).

Recovery of cod fishing only started taking place around 1830. During these 250 years, 90% of the cod consumed in Portugal was imported.

In 1967 the fishing quotas in Newfoundland were reduced. The Portuguese codfish industry faced its worst years between 1968-69. The situation was chaotic in 1974, when it became very difficult to recruit fishermen, who chose to emigrate. That was the beginning of the end of the Portuguese codfish industry.

Based on: "História da Pesca do Bacalhau" (19 Nov. 2001), by Prof. José Carlos Teixeira.

Further readings:

"The Fishing Station", by Shannon Ryan.

"Oceanos" (in Portuguese)

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History of Canada

First Commercial Ventures

From the early 1500s until after 1600, Basques, people from southern France and northern Spain, came each year to Labrador and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to hunt whales. English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese fishers came to catch cod on the shallow, bountiful Grand Banks off the Atlantic coast, often drying the catch on the shores. . . In the 1600s . . . the Spanish and Portuguese quit fishing in the Grand Banks.

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Copied from http://www.ernestina.org/publications/wowmanl2.pdf (p. 11 of 35)

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In Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1997), Mark Kurlansky tells about "the role of cod in world history". In the words of Karlene Schwartz, the reviewer of the book, "Fishermen from the Viking era to the present roved the Atlantic, catching cod in vast quantities for 1,000 years. Cod commerce on the four continents that bound the Atlantic was the most profitable fish business in history. Now this handsome fish faces extinction".

There is also the children's version, called The Cod's Tale.

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	The cod in stamps
1865	1880	1887