Grand Banks

Map showing the Grand Banks

The Grand Banks is a large area of submerged highlands southeast of Newfoundland and east of the Laurentian Channel on the North American continental shelf.

Covering 36,000 square miles (93,200 sq km), the Banks are relatively shallow, ranging from 80 to 330 feet (25 to 100 meters) in depth. In this area, the cold Labrador Current mixes with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. The mixing of these waters and the shape of the ocean bottom lifts nutrients to the surface. These conditions created one of the richest fishing grounds in the world.

Character

Historic map including the Grand Banks.

Extensive marine life flourishes in the Grand Banks both on or near the bottom, as well as in the water column, due in part to its relative shallowness. Its extensive range provides important spawning, nursery and feeding areas to a large number of fish and shellfish species, whose natural range extends beyond the exclusive economic zone and into international waters. This has made it an important part of the Canadian and the high seas fisheries.

Fish species include Atlantic cod, haddock, capelin, Atlantic halibut, redfish (ocean perch), Greenland halibut (turbot), yellowtail, witch flounder, and American plaice (a flatfish). Crustaceans include crab, lobster, scallop, and shrimp.

The area also supports large colonies of sea birds such as Northern Gannets, shearwaters and sea ducks and various sea mammals such as seals, dolphins and whales.

The meeting of the cold Labrador Current and the warm Gulf Stream in this vicinity causes heavy fogs. Coupled with hazardous icebergs and the nearby transatlantic shipping lanes, fishing in the Grand Banks is hazardous.

History

Replica of John Cabot's ship, the Matthew, in which he sailed from England to Newfoundland.

The Beothuk, the aboriginal inhabitants of the island of Newfoundland at the time of European contact in the 15th and 16th centuries, were not known to have fished the Grand Banks.

While the area's "official" discovery is credited to John Cabot in 1497, English and Portuguese vessels are known to have sought out these waters prior to that, based upon information dating from earlier Viking voyages to Newfoundland. Several navigators, including Basque fishermen, are known to have fished these waters in the 15th century. In the 15th century some texts refer to a land called Bacalao, the land of the codfish, which is possibly Newfoundland.

However, it was not until John Cabot noted their fabulous abundance that the existence of these fishing grounds became widely known in Europe. Soon, fishers and merchants from France, Spain, Portugal and England developed seasonal inshore fisheries producing for southern European markets.

Known as "dry" fishery, cod were split, salted, and dried on shore over the summer before crews returned to Europe. The French pioneered "wet" or "green" fishery on the Banks proper around 1550, heavily salting the cod on board and immediately returning home. Within twenty years of that, hundreds of vessels and thousands of men were active in the two fisheries. Soon these fish stocks became important for the early economies of eastern Canada and New England.

On November 18, 1929, a major earthquake (known as the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake) on the southwestern part of the Grand Banks bordering the Laurentian Channel caused an underwater landslide which resulted in extensive damage to transatlantic cables and generated a rare Atlantic tsunami that struck the south coast of Newfoundland and eastern Cape Breton Island claiming 27 lives in the Burin Peninsula.

Disputes

Technological advances in fishing such as large factory ships and sonar, as well as geopolitical disputes over territorial sea and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) boundaries, have led to overfishing and a serious decline in the fish stocks of the Grand Banks from around 1990. Fishery-based economy of Newfoundland and Labrador is in a severe crisis from 1990s. Canada's EEZ currently occupies the majority of the Grand Banks except for the lucrative "nose" (eastern extremity, near the Flemish Cap) and "tail" (southern extremity) of the fishing bank. However, the Treaty of Paris (1783) gives the United States shared rights to fish these waters, despite the EEZ.

REWORD: The Grand Banks were probably the world's most important international fishing ground until 1977, when Canada extended its offshore jurisdiction to include most of the area. Many of the commercial species, however, were overfished and depleted by the early 1990s. Oil drilling began on the banks in the late 1970s, but was slowed after the loss of the Ocean Ranger rig on Feb. 15, 1982.

Research

Canada is currently performing the hydrographic and geological surveys necessary for claiming the entire continental shelf off eastern Canada, under the auspices of the latest United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Once this aspect of UNCLOS is ratified, Canada will presumably control these remaining parts of Grand Banks which are outside of its EEZ jurisdiction.

Petroleum reserves have also been discovered and a number of oil fields are under development in this region, most notably the Hibernia, Terra Nova, and White Rose projects; the harsh environment on the Grand Banks also led to the Ocean Ranger disaster.

Semi-fictional depictions of fishermen working on the Grand Banks can be found in Sebastian Junger's novel The Perfect Storm (1997) and in Rudyard Kipling's novel Captains Courageous (1897).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Answers Corporation. Grand Banks Retrieved June 6, 2008.
• Bradley, W. P. (1969). They live by the wind; the lore and romance of the last sailing workboats: the Grand Banks schooners, the square-rigged training ships, the Chesapeake oysterboats, the fishing sloops of the Bahamas. New York: Knopf.
• Greenpeace. History of the Grand Banks Cod Fishery Retrieved June 6, 2008.
• Hiscott, Richard N., and Andrew J. Pulham. 2005. Petroleum resources and reservoirs of the Grand Banks, eastern Canadian margin. Geological Association of Canada special paper, 43. St. John's, N.L.: Geological Association of Canada. ISBN 9780919216822
• Kurlansky, Mark. 1997. Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world. New York: Walker and Co. ISBN 9780802713261
• The Columbia Gazetteer of North America. Grand Banks Retrieved June 6, 2008.

External links

All Links Retrieved June 6, 2008.

• Overfishing:The Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap
• Government response to the standing committee on fisheries and oceans' tenth report

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