Grand Banks

The Grand Banks are an important aspect of Atlantic Canadian culture due to their economic impacts and the lesson learned by the overfishing of this area and the subsequent depletion of one of the largest fish stocks in the world. I took a Canadian history course at Mount Royal College in Calgary and we discussed the implication of the overfishing of the Grand Banks in detail and after this I understood how awful it was and how bad it looked on the Canadian government that we were not able to control this problem. The Grand Banks are a group of underwater plateaus southeast of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. These areas are relatively shallow, ranging from 25 to 100 metres in depth. The cold Labrador Current mixes with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream here.The mixing of these waters and the shape of the ocean bottom lifts nutrients to the surface. These conditions created one of the richest fishing grounds in the world. Fish species include Atlantic cod, haddock and capelin. Shellfish include scallop and lobster. The area also supports large colonies of sea birds such as Northern Gannets, shearwaters and sea ducks and various sea mammals such as seals, dolphins and whales.
In addition to the effects on nutrients, the mixing of the cold and warm currents often causes fog in the area. Canada is currently performing the hydrographic and geological surveys necessary for claiming the entire continental shelf off eastern Canada, under the auspices of the latest United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Once this aspect of UNCLOS is ratified, Canada will presumably control these remaining parts of Grand Banks which are outside of its EEZ jurisdiction.
Petroleum reserves have also been discovered and a number of oil fields are under development in this region, most notably the Hibernia, Terra Nova, and White Rose projects; the harsh environment on the Grand Banks also led to the Ocean Ranger disaster.