Greenpeace Canada launches “There’s probably no cod” spoof campaign

The ad campaign uses the iconic Atlantic cod to sound the alarm bells about a growing and devastating problem - the overfishing of favourite seafood species faster than they can rebuild to sustainable levels. As a result, many are heading toward commercial extinction.

"The Atlantic cod off Canada's East coast is a perfect example of what happens when overfishing meets mismanagement," said Sarah King, Greenpeace oceans campaigner. "Our fisheries managers seem to have learned nothing from the devastation of the cod. Not only are we continuing to overfish them, but we're repeating this disastrous pattern throughout the world's oceans."

The collapse of the Atlantic cod shows that our current approach to commercial fishing can mean the extinction of even the most abundant fisheries. The result is not only the devastation of a species but of entire communities. Greenpeace's ad is a call to fisheries managers and the fishing sector to avoid further damage and to stop overfishing and think of future generations.

The ad can be seen on a billboard in Halifax located at 2866 Gottingen Street (at Macara St.) and in Ottawa at 1822 Bank Street (at Walkley Rd.). The billboards will be up for four weeks. An ad will also appear on a handful of Halifax buses over the next month.

"What we want people to take from this message is that we should be treating the cod as if there are none left," said King. "Current stock levels are so low that if we don't act now, total extinction will surely be their fate. The scientific community, including the federal government's own scientists, says that fishing levels are putting the stocks at high risk, and yet year after year we wonder why they won't recover."

Greenpeace has a sustainable seafood campaign aimed at encouraging Canada's retail sector to remove certain Redlist species from sale to help ensure the oceans and their shelves won't be sold out of stock. Atlantic cod is found on the Redlist because it is both overfished and destructively fished. And while many stocks are under moratorium, bycatch and other quotas remain and bottom trawls continue to be employed.

For more information including a scientific backgrounder on the state of Atlantic cod stocks, please visit www.greenpeace.ca