There's more scientific evidence that the bleak situation in the waters off Newfoundland is improving. Experts are already encouraged by the return of capelin in the last few years, and now they have more good news from even smaller organisms, plankton.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientist Pierre Pepin studies plankton. These are the microscopic plants and animals that are at the bottom of the ocean's food chain.

Pepin said what he has been observing over the last decade is encouraging.

"On both the Newfoundland shelf and the Grand Banks, we've generally seen increase of the overall abundance of plankton."

"It suggests that we are headed back to conditions that are more normal," he said.

Pepin said some species that normally have a single generation are starting to produce a second generation every year.

"And that also bodes well for the long-term changes we have been observing."

He also examined the relationship between plankton and capelin, and said he has found a clear link between the amount of available plankton and the health of fish like capelin that feed on it.

The two main species of animal plankton off Newfoundland's waters are becoming more productive. He said the spring and fall blooms of plant plankton are getting larger and more intense as well.

"It's all suggesting that the environment, at least for now, is moving in a positive state," said Pepin.

There are no records to show what role, if any, plankton played in the collapse of the ground fishery more than two decades ago. Systematic surveys of plankton along the Atlantic coast didn't start until well after the collapse.

Pepin said that warmer ocean waters in recent years may be one contributing factor to plankton's increased production.