In 50 years on the Cape, I've seen live cod only in the Woods Hole aquarium. Many happy hours I've trolled Billingsgate Shoals, pretending to be Ernest Hemingway but catching mostly bluefish, bass and, on an odd day, dogfish.


I've bottom fished for flounder. Some summers I've stocked my freezer for the year, but never with cod, one of the most delicate, versatile food fishes around. Although cod is usually the quarry of big boats fishing the offshore banks, I had a neighbor who hand-lined cod off East Sandwich beach this time of year.

The Cape's namesake fish is only one of about 20 major food fishes in our waters. Unfortunately, the myth of a limitless oceanic fishery has led to species after species being mined rather than husbanded. When one favored fish is depleted, it's been replaced by another in a deadly version of musical chairs.

Reports describe "harvesting" fish, but both commercial and sport fishing resemble the market hunting that depleted terrestrial food species like buffalo and wild turkey. Atlantic halibut, Acadian redfish and yellowtail flounder have been fished to "commercial extinction" at various times in the last century. Haddock has crashed and recovered several times.

Fishing doesn't entail the same incentive structure for long-term production as farmers owning land because nobody owns the ocean. Much of the world's farmland has been cultivated for centuries, even millennia, with increasing productivity. The same cannot be said of the world's ocean fisheries, even as demand increases for the culinary and nutritional virtues of fish.

Fishermen reap but they do not sow. They suffer more competing interests and have fewer clear boundaries. Regenerating fish stocks is more difficult than planting more wheat, rice and beans.

In the last 40 years a rough consensus has developed for regulating fisheries to rebuild long-term health and productivity. An alphabet soup of fact-gathering institutions and regulatory agencies has arisen, some centered on Cape Cod. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Teri Frady, chief of research communications, says, "One thing we have a lot of is data."

After many ups and downs, substantial progress began with the federal Magnuson Act of 1976, which established the 200-mile offshore jurisdiction in response to overfishing by foreign fleets of factory ships. Domestic catches increased in subsequent years, then were overfished by enlarged local fleets. Jurisdiction is both federal and regional and regulations change often. Administrative decisions require changes in fishing gear, fishing grounds and accessible times. Changes can whipsaw everyone from boat builders to food consumers.

On Jan. 19, NOAA issued final guidance to "end overfishing," which resulted in new restrictions issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Nine members of Congress from New England, including U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, considered the restrictions too stringent. Last Wednesday, they urged a replacement proposal by the New England Fishery Management Council. On the same day, a federal judge in Boston reinstated a program affecting the Gloucester and New Hampshire fleets.

Spider webs and fishing nets are miracles of simplicity compared to the tangle of regulations, rulings, competing interests and acrimony revolving around fishing.

On the Cape, the complexion of fishing has changed but its importance remains. Only Chatham and Provincetown still host large commercial fleets, but many harbor villages host small fleets. Anglers ply Cape waters from rocks and beaches, dozens of charter boats and hundreds of recreational boats. No longer is salt cod a cheap lunch for 19th-century mill hands, but modern diners still savor fresh, grilled striped bass, sauteed flounder with a spritz of lemon juice, cod baked slowly beneath a crust of spicy bread crumbs, served with slivered carrots and leeks.

A comprehensive history of the Cape's most famous fish and its subsequent decline appears in the short, meaty 1997 book "Cod" by Mark Kurlansky. It's a gloomy saga but told with wit, flair and empathy for fishing traditions. The book ends with 38 pages of cod recipes — just in case!
