Bankers’ Hours to Bankruptcy: the Collapse of Gulf of Maine Cod

A first-person account of how Gulf of Maine cod went from a seemingly rebuilt stock—fueled by “bankers’ hours” trips close to port and optimistic assessments—to a collapse that rewrote the science, the politics, and my career. Drawing on years spent on NOAA survey decks and in assessment rooms, the piece unpacks how sand lance hot spots, hyperstable catch rates, shifting stock structure, industry-funded “science for hire,” and a rapidly warming Gulf of Maine combined to mask just how deep the trouble ran. It’s a story about models that kept revising the past downward, a management system that leaned on optimism whenever uncertainty appeared, and a once-iconic stock that has since been carved into multiple units on paper even as its regional footprint has faded from the water—and about why, even after walking away from federal cod assessments, I still root for the fish and the communities that rise and fall with them.