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The Atlantic Canadian Groundfishery: Roots Of A Collapse, Anthony T. Charles

Dalhousie Law Journal

While many explanations have been proposed for the 1990s Atlantic Canadian groundfishery collapse-ranging from "natural causes" to over-fishing and damaging technologies, to failures of fishery management and science-this paper examines the possibility that underlying these, at the roots of the collapse, liae set of entrenched attitudes that have driven fishery decision making. These attitudes, about the natural world, about management and about how the fishery should function, became influential especially where they prevailed at the institutional level, as the accepted wisdom among the dominant players in government and the fishery. Four sets of conservation-related attitudes are considered, dealing with (1) …