Cod

A fish native to much of the North Atlantic that became a major food supply for Europeans, especially after Basque fisherman perfected preservation techniques involving salt.

The Atlantic cod are descendants of a species of fish that began to evolve perhaps 120 million years ago. By the early modern period the descendants of these ancient fish lived in great schools that preferred relatively shallow waters, such as those to be found in the Grand Banks off modern-day Newfoundland and Labrador. The best areas for catching cod then stretched from the Grand Banks southward, near the coast of modern-day New England as far south as Georges Bank off the coast of Massachusetts. Cod were also remarkably fertile fish: A fifty-inch long female could lay 9 million eggs; although most eggs never produced a fish, enough matured so that the schools of cod off the North American coast were the greatest supply of cod in the world at the time. For the population of cod to remain constant, each female had to have two of the eggs become full-grown fish. Whatever the difficulties faced by these tiny eggs, which were perfect food for other fish, the odds were good that the schools would remain abundant, at least until there were serious pressures applied to cod from some external source.

During the early modern age cod was for humans perhaps the most important denizen of the oceans. Norse sailors had relied on cod during their voyages to the Western Hemisphere, and by the time Christopher Columbus spread news about his findings, Basque fishermen had quite likely been sailing in American waters for years hauling cod. Cod became a major industry for the Basques, in large part because the Mediterranean had salt deposits and a warm sun, two ingredients necessary for extracting sufficient salt to preserve fish. (The Norse, by contrast, had to develop other preservation methods, none of them as effective as salting). Basques also profited from injunctions of the Catholic Church that required the faithful to avoid meat on certain days but allowed them to eat “cold” foods, including seafood. Anyone who could sell inexpensive fish thus had an opportunity for great profits.

When Sebastian Cabot arrived in northeastern North America in the late 15th century, he found out firsthand about the great stocks of cod to be had. By then such knowledge was already known to merchants in Bristol, who had been sending ships for years deep into the Atlantic in the hope they would return with cod. As cod’s modern-day “biographer” put it, this was “the fish that changed the world.”

Further reading: Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (New York: Walker, 1997).