The Turbot War (Spanish: Guerra del Fletán; French: Guerre du flétan) was an international fishing dispute and bloodless conflict between Canada and Spain (with the European Union) and their respective supporters.
On 9 March 1995, Canadian officials from the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Cape Roger boarded the Spanish fishing trawler Estai from Galicia in international waters 220 nautical miles (410 km; 250 mi) off Canada's East Coast after they had fired three 50-calibre machine-gun bursts over her bow. They arrested the trawler's crew, then forced Estai to St. John's harbour. Canada claimed that European Union factory ships were illegally overfishing Greenland halibut (also known as Greenland turbot) in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) regulated area on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, just outside Canada's declared 200-nautical-mile (370 km) exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The dispute spread to the British Isles where British and Irish governments gave their support to Canada, risking their status in the EU Community. A number of Spanish fishing vessels were boarded and arrested as a result due to illegal fishing practices. The EU put pressure on Spain to back down and agree to a deal. Eventually, a deal was reached on 5 April in spite of Spanish objections; they were forced to leave the disputed zone. Canada's right to eject foreign fishing vessels from the area, using military force if necessary, was also accepted.
Background
Territorial seas have changed over time, having begun with a 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) "cannon shot" territorial sea, followed by the long-standing extension to a 12 nautical miles (22 km) standard. The economic control of the waters surrounding nations to 200 nautical miles (370 km) exclusive economic zones (EEZ) was agreed at the conference on the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982 and became recognized internationally in 1994.
From the 1950s to 70s, domestic and foreign fishing fleets became increasingly industrialized, with massive factory freezer trawlers fishing out of Newfoundland ports. Foreign fleets were based in Newfoundland and could fish 12 nautical miles (22 km) offshore, and domestic fleets could fish in both the territorial sea and the offshore. By the 1970s, the overfishing by industrial vessels in the waters of the other provinces of Eastern Canada was evident although each subsequent federal government continued to ignore the problem and even contributed to it by using the issuance of fishing licences for more inshore and offshore domestic vessels.
Many nations declared 200 nautical mile EEZs, including the US, Canada did in 1977. The EEZ boundaries became a foreign policy issue when overlapping claims existed, as was the case between Canada and the US in the Gulf of Maine, Dixon Entrance, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Beaufort Sea as well as between Canada and France in the case of St. Pierre and Miquelon. After the Canadian declaration of its 200 nautical mile EEZ in 1977, fishermen on the whole in Eastern Canada could fish unhindered out to the limit without fear of competing with foreign fleets. The government provided subsidies to increase the fishing fleet and local industry. Meanwhile, the annual Total Allowable Catch (TAC) was set so high that fishing mortality was double that of the stock's Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY).
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Canada's domestic offshore fleet grew as fishermen and fish processing companies rushed to take advantage. It was then noticed that the foreign fleets now pushed out to 200 nautical miles (370 km) offshore and excluded from the rich Canadian waters were increasing their harvest in the small areas of the Grand Banks, outside the EEZ. Canada's fishery scientists assumed only 5% of the Northern cod stocks was living in international waters regulated by NAFO, and 95% of the cod stock was inside the Canadian EEZ, where only Canadian vessels were allowed to fish. By the late 1980s, smaller catches of Northern Cod were being reported along the Atlantic coast of Canada as the federal government and citizens of coastal regions in the area began to face the reality that domestic and foreign overfishing had taken its toll. Stocks of cod in and around Canada's EEZ were severely depleted. Reluctant to act because of its already-declining political popularity, the federal government was forced to take drastic action in 1992, and a total moratorium was declared indefinitely for Northern Cod. The TAC for the Canadian EEZ and NAFO regulated area was based on Canadian scientific advice, which turned out to be wrong and the Northern cod stock collapsed in 1992 and has never recovered.
The immediate impact was felt most in Newfoundland, followed by the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. The nascent Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, organised after the 1977 EEZ declarations to co-ordinate conservation efforts in Canada, the US, and member nations in Europe also declared a ban, but it was implemented too late to be effective. Cod had five to ten years before being caught in record numbers, but it had vanished almost overnight and considered for endangered species protection.
The economic impact in coastal Newfoundland was unprecedented. To lessen the impact that its policies of permitting overfishing had exacted upon rural Newfoundlanders, the federal government swiftly created a relief program called the "Atlantic Groundfish Strategy" (TAGS) to provide short- to medium-term financial support and employment retraining for the longer term. Despite TAGS, Newfoundland and coastal Nova Scotian communities began to experience an out-migration on a scale not seen in Canada since the prairie Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The anger at federal politicians was palpable. With the wholesale rejection of the new Prime Minister Kim Campbell, the incoming Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's Liberals were going to face the ongoing wrath of voters since their entire livelihoods had been decimated as a result of decades of federal neglect and mismanagement, and their communities, property values, net worth, and way of life were declining rapidly.
In the years since the cod moratorium, federal fisheries policy makers and scientists attempted to find a replacement species that could at least reinject economic stimulus into the affected regions. The ground fishery was a fraction of what it had been during the cod years but had some bright spots, one of which was the Greenland halibut, commonly known in Canada as turbot. Demand for the turbot had decreased because of a common dislike for its taste in the European Union.
Canada was not alone in recognising the growing value of the turbot, and foreign fishing fleets operating off the 200 nautical mile EEZ were also beginning to pursue the species in increasing numbers as a response to the Northern cod moratorium. However, the turbot was not a fish under quota regulation in NAFO until the autumn of 1994, when it established a catch limit. Until then, Spanish vessels had explored turbot fishery on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks.
The Canadians claimed that the turbot had relocated outside their EEZ to deeper waters, and they should have quotas based on their historical fisheries inside its EEZ. On the other hand, the Spanish and the Portuguese claimed that was an unexplored stock. Since they had initially started exploring the stocks, Spain and Portugal believed that they should have historic rights to the turbot fishery on the Grand Banks Nose and Tail, based on their historical catches. The total reported annual catches grew steadily from 27,000 t in 1990 to 62,000 t in 1994, when the Spanish and Portuguese vessels started to explore that fishery after other stocks were closed. Based on their catch history, the two countries claimed they should have 75% of the total turbot quota.
The turbot issue came before the NAFO annual meeting in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1994. After questioning the scientists' advice, the EU proposed a TAC of 40,000 t although Canada argued for 15,000 t. The meeting settled on 27,000 t. A meeting was scheduled for Brussels on 30 January through 1 February 1995 to establish a distribution key for allocating quotas among the contracting parties. The EU approved the overall catch limit at the December meeting of the Fisheries Council over the objections of Spain and Portugal, which argued that the EU should set an autonomous quota of 30,000 t on the basis that scientific evidence allowed for a 40,000 t TAC even though NAFO's Scientific Council had pointedly refrained from recommending a figure.
Canada and NAFO had tracked about 50 violations of boats crossing the 200 nautical mile EEZ limit to fish illegally within Canadian waters and recorded the use of illegal gear and overfishing outside Canadian waters. There was a growing concern in Canada that the turbot stock, like the Northern cod in 1992, was threatened by collapse.
In October 1994, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Brian Tobin, contacted the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors and asked them to honour the NAFO regulation requiring countries to inspect their flag vessels to ensure that they were following the NAFO technical regulations. No improvement occurred.
In 1993, the NAFO council had already decided to introduce and test new inspection measures, such as on-board observers, on 10% of the vessels fishing in NAFO-regulated waters outside the Canadian EEZ and Vessel Monitoring System (VMS). The European Commission had tried to extend its jurisdiction and the power of its inspectors in 1993, but had been turned down by the European Union Council. However the EU Council could only try to persuade national governments to follow the internationally-agreed rules as well as the rules within EU waters.
Brian Tobin directed the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), along with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), to begin a very aggressive dialogue with the EU over the presence of its fishing fleet and its practices, particularly the use of illegal trawl nets just outside the Canadian EEZ while fishing for turbot. Tobin's critics in Canada noted that he was likely using his department as a political prop to shore up support during the increased social unrest in Maritime Canada, but in the winter of 1995, Tobin directed DFO to establish a legal argument that could be made for the seizure of a foreign vessel in international waters by using the premise of conservation.
At the December 1994 NAFO conference in Brussels, both the EU and Canada claimed 75% of the agreed 27,000 tonnes TAC for turbot in the NAFO-regulated area. Both parties cited their historical catches: Canada before 1992 and the EU after 1992. The Canadian position was that it objected to the use of historic catches. Instead, it argued the special interest of the coastal state in the Law of the Sea should be used for setting the national quotas.
On 1 March 1995, the EU Council ignored a last-minute plea from Canada and unanimously agreed to invoke the objection procedure under the NAFO agreement and to set a unilateral quota of 18,630t (69% of the TAC). Tobin tried to put the Law of the Sea's principles on coastal states' special interest to the test, as a first mover. Initially, Tobin had tried to persuade his Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a unilateral extension of the Canadian EEZ to the entire Grand Banks, but that was rejected by the Canadian prime minister. Instead, Tobin declared that on 3 March 1995, the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act regulations had been broadened to make it an offence for Spanish and Portuguese vessels to fish for turbot on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks. On 6 March 1995, Tobin managed to have the Canadian cabinet authorize that extension of the law.
The same day, an EU reply came in a strongly-worded message from the Foreign Affairs Council that defended the EU's right to use the NAFO objection procedure, restated its commitment to conservation, and condemned the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act as a violation of international law.
Sections of the Canadian government agreed with the EU opinion on the unlawfulness of Canada arresting EU vessels outside the Canadian EEZ. There were strong opponents in the federal cabinet from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which had different concerns over confronting the European Union over a fellow NATO member. Tobin managed to frame the issue and to gain the support of the prime minister. That settled the issue in the cabinet since it had been persuaded on the arrest of a Spanish vessel if diplomacy failed.