A Sea Barren of Fish Carries a Message Awash in Warning

A Tancook Schooner rounds the lighthouse at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which is no longer a bustling fishing port. (By Angus Phillips For The Washington Post)

MURPHY'S COVE, Nova Scotia

The view from the dock here is much as it has been for hundreds of years. Tides ebb and flow, the sea rolls in clear and cold, boulders warm in the sunlight and seagulls wheel and dive. Only one thing is lacking -- fishing boats.

"There's nothing left to fish for," says Brian Murphy, latest in the family line for which the place is named. Murphys came here six generations ago to fish for cod and pollock, halibut and haddock.

"My father was a fisherman and his father was a fisherman, but not me. Not that I'd want it, anyway, but the choice isn't there anymore. There's nothing left to fish for."

It's not just Murphy's Cove that's so grimly affected. In 10 days roaming this green, lightly populated province where moose, deer and bears roam, the only outdoors equipment I never needed to unpack was my fishing gear.

We crossed dozens of streams but never saw a trout or salmon fisherman working the riffles, and stopped at scores of harbors and coves from Cape Breton to Annapolis Royal to Halifax but never saw a sport-fishing boat out plying the tides.

"All but one of our seafood processing houses has shut down," said Keith Merrill, skipper of Eastern Star, a wooden sailboat that takes tourists on two-hour sightseeing cruises out of Lunenburg, a once-bustling fishing port where draggers and trawlers now lie mouldering away. "They still catch lobsters here, but the ground-fishing is pretty much finished."

Murphy, who runs a campground on the property where his ancestors landed their catch, says he can remember as a lad 40 years ago looking out at the wharf to see halibut up to 275 pounds lined up, plus "big cod, and lots of 'em." He still keeps a boat around to take guests out. "They ask, 'Can we fish?' I tell them sure, but don't expect to catch anything."

Why bring this misery up? Well, if you look at a map of the Atlantic Ocean you'll see that Nova Scotia sits in a staggeringly productive-looking place. The continental shelf runs 100 miles and more out to the south before falling into the deep Atlantic abyss, and to the east lie the storied Grand Banks, where the greatest cod fishery known to man once sustained fleets from around the world.

All that is gone, with no signs of coming back.

Now run your finger down to Chesapeake Bay, a tiny sliver of tidewater compared to the banks off Nova Scotia, and ask yourself this: If in a few generations commercial interests can fish the Grand Banks and the Continental Shelf off Nova Scotia to utter depletion, what chance does our poor little Chesapeake have?