The northern cod stock off Newfoundland and Labrador sustained a fishery from the sixteenth century onward. Industrial trawling from the 1950s pushed landings to unsustainable heights, biomass fell steeply through the 1980s, and in July 1992 Canada declared a moratorium that put tens of thousands of people out of work in a single announcement.
The expectation was a short closure. Recovery did not follow on that timescale. Spawning biomass stayed at a small fraction of historical levels for decades, and although the stock has grown from its late-1990s low, it remains far below the abundance the fishery was built on. Cod is assessed globally by the IUCN as Vulnerable.
The likely reason a closure alone did not fix it is that the system changed. With cod removed, forage species and invertebrates such as shrimp and snow crab increased, and those species prey on or compete with young cod, which can lock in the new state. Capelin, the key prey, also declined. How much weight to give predation, capelin scarcity, cold-period effects and continued fishing mortality is still argued.