In cod we trust: Newfoundland's famous fish aims at a comeback, but not everyone's happy

financialpost.com:

An internet search of the most common male names in Newfoundland and Labrador dating back through the ages reveals a robust mix of Pauls, Johns, Williams, Richards, Henrys, Patricks, Davids and Michaels. There are plenty of Alberts, too.

But there are almost no Albertos, a scarcity that prompted Alberto Wareham, the chief executive of Icewater Seafoods Inc., a fish processing plant in Arnold’s Cove, to offer a brief history lesson of a name that has been knocking around his family tree for generations and was given to him upon birth 55 years ago.

The first Alberto, he said, was a “Portuguese lady” from Porto. She was an adventurous sort who moved to the United Kingdom to marry an Englishman before they sailed across the Atlantic to Newfoundland, circa 1800. Upon arrival, the family established itself in an industry that it has been involved in ever since, one that relies upon the province’s most famous commodity, one kissed by tourists, enjoyed in fish and chips, historically exploited, politicized, mourned, agonized over, controversial and currently in season: the North Atlantic cod.

“The cod is literally why us Newfoundlanders are here,” Wareham said. “You’ve probably heard the story, but we had an Italian explorer — his English name was John Cabot — and he came over in 1497, and his sailors put their baskets in the water and pulled them up and couldn’t believe how many fish there were. And that was the beginning of Newfoundland, and for the first 500 years of our existence, cod and fishing were basically all we did.”

Newfoundlanders all know how that worked out. The mechanization of the industry did away with the baskets of Cabot’s time and eventually brought factory trawlers, ocean floor draggers and exploiters of a