The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

The Disappearance of the Cod in the Mid-Sixties
Just when everything looked well the phenomenon that many authorities
had feared, and some had warned against, occurred: the cod disappeared
again. If it did not totally disappear, it declined steadily up to 1975, and
thereafter became very unreliable. Some good luck amidst the disaster
was the beginning of the shrimp fishery in Disko Bay from the 1960s.
This fishery soon overtook cod fishing as the most important business.
Still, shrimp exploitation was never on a scale that could finance the
societal development which all politicians agreed to further. In the
beginning of the 1990s, the shrimp fishery declined and export prices
fell. The prospect of financing Greenlandic society by fishing began
evaporating in the frosty air. 176
Figure 1. Cod and Shrimp Catches in Greenland (tons)
These developments can be seen in figure 1. The number of fishermen
grew to about 2,500 in the 1960s and stayed there for the next 25 years.
Together with the staff in fish processing plants and in auxiliary
businesses, the fishery employed about 25% of the population in the
176 Martin Paldam, 1994.
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