Human life is dependant on the renewable resources of nature, soil, water, forests and the resources found in rivers and oceans. Today these resources face many threats due to pollution, mismanagement and exploitation. One of these threatened resources is the world's ocean fisheries. With rising populations, increasing consumption of fish and expanding markets have made the fisheries a target for ever-growing numbers of nations. New technologies that allow the fish to be vacuumed out of the sea have brought hundreds of fish species close to exhaustion. As the fish stocks around the world continue to decline, competition and conflict increase. .
For the past 500 years, the seas off Atlantic Canada have supported one of the world's richest commercial fisheries. It all started in 1497 when an explorer from England, John Cabot found his ship literally trapped in an aggregation of fish. Off-shore he found a sea, "swarming with fish - which can only be taken not only with nets, but in baskets led down with a stone."(LeBlanc 1999). He was eventually followed to the "Grand Banks" by other fisherman from Europe, and so began the unique settlement of Newfoundland.
Nature has given Atlantic Canada a vast continental shelf that provides an excellent physical environment for fishing. The warm ocean currents from the Gulf of Mexico and the cold Labrador Current create ideal conditions for fish reproduction and growth. The continental shelf extends almost 400 km offshore (Bone 2002). Where the continental shelf is raised, places which are called banks, the water is relatively low. The Grand Banks of Newfoundland is one of the largest banks near Nova Scotia. .
Atlantic Canada has become heavily dependant on Ottawa after the cod moratorium in 1992. Ottawa sends money to the region through cash subsidies, which is extremely important particularly to those engaged in seasonal industries, such as self-employed fishers and those employed in the fish plants and logging operations.
