The State-Spaced Integrated assessment model for Newfoundland's 'northern cod' as a stock assessment model that fails to distinguish between normative and natural laws

Abstract

Stock assessment models for Atlantic Canada's groundfish fisheries such as Noel Cadigan's recent State-Spaced Integrated assessment model for Newfoundland's 'northern cod' involve single premised inductive arguments that do not distinguish between normative and natural laws. By contrast, management of Canada's inshore Maritime lobster fishery has involved a dual premised deductive argument in the form of a critical dualism in which normative regulations are developed by trial and error, guided by negative feedback from the natural universal law of sustainability. It is my thesis that if Atlantic Canada's groundfish fisheries are to avoid further collapse they will, like the inshore lobster fishery, have to be managed by a critical dualism in which decisions are taken (not made). In this dual premised deductive argument catch limits (quotas) representing normative laws, would be developed by trial-and-error involving the method of 'selection by error elimination' guided by universal natural laws such as the universal law of sustainability, theories that explain what cannot be achieved by the groundfish fishery and what should not therefore be attempted by the fishery as a whole.