Fleetwood and as transport became more efficient, more overnight visitors became day visitors. The Hillhouse plant was heavily cut back, and was finally closed in 1999. Most serious, however, was the collapse of the fishing industry, which was largely destroyed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Cod Wars, a dispute over fishing rights between Iceland and the UK. As Fleetwood's trawlers mainly fished the North Atlantic in search of cod, the loss of the fishing grounds hit the town hard. The last deep sea trawler left the town in 1982 and now only inshore fishing boats fish out
Cod Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) banned fishing for northern (that is, cod to the north and east of the island of Newfoundland, in Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization areas JKL) cod in 1992, which caused great economic hardship in Newfoundland and Labrador. The collapse was blamed on cold water, or seals, and it had even been suggested the cod were really still there; only rarely was overfishing acknowledged, or management's role in that. The DFO partly lifted its ban in 1997, although the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea noted the poor recovery of Canadian cod stocks. In