HALIFAX - New research suggests that several East Coast fish stocks that collapsed in the early 1990s appear to be recovering, years after scientists said their return seemed unlikely.
Oceanographer Ken Frank says cod, haddock and redfish are showing promising signs of recovery on the Eastern Scotian Shelf since they were wiped out and placed under moratorium in 1993.
Frank, a biologist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, suggests the number of fish that preyed on those species are decreasing, allowing the vulnerable stocks to increase in biomass.
Frank, whose research is published today in the journal Nature, also found that cod body sizes are increasing slightly.
The findings come after Frank published a paper in 2005 claiming that the virtual disappearance of cod and other large species such as haddock, flounder and hake, led to what he calls a cascade effect.
Large predators declined dramatically, but the fish they preyed on -- forage fish like herring, capelin, shrimp and snow crab -- were allowed to thrive and eventually underwent a population explosion.
