Product Description
As the last of the northern cod disappeared from the fishing banks of eastern North America during the waning years of the 20th century, more than just fish faced the threat of extinction. In communities all around the island of Newfoundland, thousands of fishermen and their families suddenly found themselves confronted by a similar threat. This is the story of these people, who are at once the perpetrators and the victims of this event. As he did in his best-selling Riddle of the Ice, Arms employs the drama of the voyage to bring readers face to face with the people and the geography of the tale he tells. It is the tale of a particular time and place. Yet it is also an allegory of sorts-about predators and prey, about greed and denial, and about our collective ability as human beings to destroy natural systems once thought to be infinite.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 4 reviews)

The moratorium from the view of an outsider

I was 12 when the moratorium was imposed, and though I grew up in the big city (I'm a Torontonian,) I have a lot of family out in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and spent a lot of time out there when I was growing up and consequently, the moratorium was a big part of my teenage years.

Arms' social history of life in Newfoundland after the moratorium is fascinating. He is thorough in his reasearch, relying not just on the fishermen to provide him information, but the scientists and politicians (however unpopular) as well. In the end, he comes out with a well-rounded view of post-moratorium Newfoundland, its displaced fishermen and those who have adopted a new fishery to support themselves, the general cuisine of the island that relied so heavily on its cod industry and the science behind why the temporary moratorium was still at the book's publication (and remains 15 years on from its imposition) in place.

Overall, an excellent read if you want to know more about Newfoundland at the turn of the new century, the codfishing industry, the people who had and have made a living on the water and/or the science of why, 15 years later, the cod population has failed to recover as the DFO expected it to do within a few years.
June 17, 2007

Many faces of little-known places, and a warning to the world

As humans affect the natural world, so does it affect us. This basic fact can be easy to forget in places where technology masks our interactions with the earth's systems. But it is vividly evident in Newfoundland, where the abrupt collapse of cod populations prompted a fishing moratorium in 1992, ending an industry that had been the island's lifeblood for centuries.

Why did the cod vanish? In the summer of 1996, American writer Myron Arms sailed around Newfoundland's coast, searching for answers to this question. Servants of the Fish is a memoir of his journey, of visits to a variety of communities and interviews with residents and of his personal struggle to understand this devastating event and its implications for the world at large.

Arms examines many facets of a very complex issue. Most of the people featured are fishermen and their families, though scientists, politicians, tour guides and others are also given voice. Everyone offers their own reasons for the cod collapse, from harvest of capelin (a major cod food source) by foreign factory ships to inadequate research by fisheries scientists to climate change. One man claims that the destruction of commercial sealing by activists in the 1980s allowed seals to multiply unchecked and eat all the cod, and that the fish won't return "until we gets rid of them seals once and for all." A proud Briton blames the "damn Canadians" in the government for treating their fishery as an expendable commodity. Arms listens to all of these proclamations and takes each with a grain or three of salt, understanding that nobody--including himself--knows the whole truth.

Whatever the reason for the cod collapse, it affected everyone. Some communities are emptying as people depart for more promising places, leaving eerie reminders of what once was. Many fishermen are living on welfare or trying out the chancy new shrimp and snow crab fisheries; their accounts of lost livelihood and fear for the future are deeply sobering. Others have taken up with new businesses, including mussel farms and tourist attractions, but are equally disturbed by what has happened. The former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, apparently unfazed and looking forward to the prospects of oil drilling, provides a jarring counter-note.

These encounters are interspersed with descriptions of his passage along the rugged coast, among icebergs, ships and whales. Every chapter covers one community, and most begin with a description of its appearance from sea. Though some may find such interludes boring and unnecessary, they weave the piece together and give readers a better sense of the area. Likewise, Arms' reflections on the history of various places, of previous visits, of scientific research relating to people's claims, can make the narrative confusing at times but add greatly to its overall depth.

Not everything is bleak. Many characters, even those hit hard by the cod's loss, are ebullient and filled with stubborn hope that they can still make lives for themselves. Some sections are a joy to read, such as an encounter with a formidable and charming farmer. There are stories to inspire us, like that of a scientist who worked with fishermen to single-handedly save up to a third of Newfoundland's whales by finding ways to keep them away from fishermen's nets and free those that were entangled--a win-win act of human ecology at its best! But an undercurrent of sadness runs strong across the land, as people confront a problem to which few can offer solutions. Lest we start feeling too removed from the situation, Arms offers occasional piercing reminders that Newfoundland is only one part of the world where resources are being destroyed at a tremendous rate. The message: if our course is not changed in a thoughtful way, it will be only a matter of time before more and more places suffer Newfoundland's fate until there is nowhere else to turn.

With compassion, intelligence and a knack for conversing easily with almost anyone he meets, Arms has assembled a mosaic of people sharing a harsh, finite home, and of their efforts to survive without the cod that has linked them all. For anyone interested in the interactions between humans and our world, and what can happen when they go seriously wrong for too long, Servants of the Fish is a very valuable read.

June 02, 2007

An Outsider's View of the Newfoundland Fishing Industry

The author sails around the coast of Newfoundland and uses his stopovers as opportunities to tell the stories of fishermen (all men)whose lives have been profoundly changed by the loss of their careers and, in some cases, their identities as fishermen.

Arms is a good storyteller, bringing to life the sometimes heartbreaking stories of these men whose source of income was quite suddenly taken away from them.

Even for someone not interested in fishing or Newfoundland the details of lives unlike their own is made interesting. Arms does a good job of making their lives and its sudden shift to another kind of life interesting.

I read the book before travelling to Newfoundland and helped me to understand the rate of unemployment I saw there and how remote some parts of Newfoundland are -- even in the 21st century.
September 17, 2005

An engrossing social history

Servants Of The Fish: A Portrait of Newfoundland after the Great Cod Collapse is an engrossing social history of the individual people and of society as a whole in the wake of the threat of northern cod extinction along the fishing banks of eastern North America. Narrated in brisk, straightforward prose, it tells of those who dedicated their lives to fishing, and who were both precipitators and victims of the ecological catastrophe. A plain-terms narration, equally accessible to the lay reader and the concerned ecologist or environmentalist alike.
October 30, 2004

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