Cod Catch Rates
The cod directed fishery in the St. Georges
Bay area was prosecuted mainly by seine vessels landing their fish
in MurphyÕs Pond. The bulk of these landings were made between 1986-1990
during which time the annual landings declined from 160 t to 50 t
in 1990. Most of the landings were made in April and May indicating
the fishery was targeting the spring migration of cod. While logbook
data are not available for these years, it is likely that the cod
were caught somewhat to the north of St. Georges Bay, probably between
East Point, P.E.I. and Cape Breton. Cod directed landings by longlines
and gillnets never exceeded 10 t per year and consequently these were
not used to calculate catch rates.
Figure 25: Average annual catch rates for cod
in St. Georges Bay. The estimates are from an analysis of purchase
slip data from seines and is restricted to years where more than 10
purchase slips for cod directed fishing were available for this gear.
The error bars indicate the approximate 95% confidence intervals of
the averages.
The cod catch rate index declined from 3 t
per slip in 1986 to about 700 kg per slip in 1990 (Fig. 25). A total
of 18 vessels reported landings from this fishery during the 1986-90
period, and 7 had landings in at least the last 3 years. This large
decline was reflected in data from all 7 of these vessels. Only 1
vessel participated in cod directed fishing in later years. It would
be interesting to investigate why this fishery stopped in 1990, 3
years before the cod directed fishery was closed in the southern Gulf
of St. Lawrence.
