A respected fisheries scientist has lost his funding for northern cod research in a move that has outraged the fisheries union in Newfoundland and Labrador.

George Rose has been carrying out annual surveys of northern cod since 1990, two years before Ottawa shut down the northern cod fishery through a moratorium.

George Rose
George Rose

At this time of year, Rose would usually be completing his annual survey in the field. Instead, he's on shore because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has eliminated funding for his research.

"It just seems that people are all too willing nowadays to wash their hands of it and say, 'Well, that's history, that's the old thing. Kiss it goodbye,'" Rose said.

A former DFO scientist, Rose is currently chair of fisheries conservation at Memorial University's Marine Institute.

He has specialized in tracking the size, age and movement of inshore cod.

Fisherman Bill Broderick, who sits on the inshore council of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union, said Rose did the only independent research on cod, and his work is more important today than ever.

"At a time when other resources are now going down, like crab, and our cod may be on the rebound, we won't have any information," Broderick said.

DFO said it cancelled the program because of rising costs, and because it's directing its science program toward more commercially valuable fisheries.

Rose disagreed with that move. "It's not an attempt to kind of rationalize and economize the research, it's an attempt to just jettison it."