Early Migratory Fishermen and Newfoundland’s Seabird Colonies Peter E. Pope* Abstract - The migratory fishery at Newfoundland was a key step in the expansion of the European world system and was, for centuries, one of the largest industrial enterprises in the New World. But large-scale predation of cod was only part of the impact Europeans had on the northwest Atlantic. The shore-based salt-cod fishery involved a complex interaction with local ecosystems, creating predatory pressure on animals used as bait. Cod fishers were large-scale predators of seabirds as well as cod. Use of the Great Auk from the Funk Islands off northern Newfoundland for provisions is well known. It is less often recognized that early fishers preferred seasonal stations close to seabird colonies, in order to use nesting birds as bait. By 1600, human predation in Newfoundland’s coastal ecosystem was already a complex business, involving local seabirds and several of the largest marine mammals, as well as fish. Even if only a relatively minor factor in the marine ecology of the northwest Atlantic, industrial-scale harvesting of seabirds probably had a major impact on the maritime cultural landscape, between 1550 and 1750. The early European toponymy of the Petit Nord, a zone exploited primarily by Breton fishers, suggests the possibility that a major seabird colony, now extirpated, once existed on the Atlantic coast of northern Newfoundland. Introduction: The Changing Landscape of the Fishery In an important article on historical overfishing and the collapse of coastal ecosystems, Jackson et al. (2001) argue that fisheries biologists must avoid the trap of choosing historical baselines of 1950 or 1900 or even 1850, simply because catch data in a recognizably modern form are available for these periods. They make a persuasive case that, between the 16th and the 18th centuries, the expansion of European activity dealt a massive shock to ecosystems along the North American littoral. Jackson and his co-authors suggest that the biologist who thinks 1900 or 1950 might be a useful baseline for charting ecosystem collapse should think again and try 1500 or 1550, even if this re-calibration presents significant challenges in assembling coherent data. This is an important perspective for the historical archaeology of the fishery. Such a perspective, with its emphasis on the interconnections among coastal species, is an explicit challenge to biologists who have interpreted the limited extant statistical evidence to minimize significant ecological change in the northwest Atlantic in the historic period before 1800 (Hutchings 1997, Rose 2004). Data on catches and, a fortiori, on stocks are almost impossible to come by before 1660. From this period on, with some critical adjustments of the raw data, we do have some suggestive statistics about one species, Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) (Pope 1997, Pope and Howse 2002). Such catch estimates, together with 16th- and 17th-century anecdotal evidence about cod and other species, have permitted marine biologists at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre (UBC) to propose a long-term model of ecosystem change in the northwest Atlantic, between 1450 and 2000 (Heymans 2003a, Pitcher 2002, Pitcher et al. 2002). Although sophisticated in its modelling of the web-like interconnections among aquatic marine species, this is not a complex model in the diachronic sense. In effect, it presents us with a pre-contact ecosystem, minimally affected by small bands of Native hunter-gatherers, followed eventually by the seriously diminished ecosystem of ca. 1900. By this time, the biomass of the system is thought to have already been reduced to something like two-thirds of its pre-contact level, with a concomitant reduction in the mean trophic level of the catch (Heymans 2003b:66). The largest marine mammals played a much less important role in the ecosystem: once numerous Walrus Odobensus rosmarus were essentially extinct in Newfoundland waters, while Right Whales (Eubaleana glacialis) and Bowhead Whales (Balaena mysticetus) were seriously depleted (Heymans and Pitcher 2002:45–46, Vasconcellos et al. 2002:8). The model is valuable because it gives us an approximate idea of the scale of change in the northwest Atlantic ecosystem in the early modern period. But the intervening four centuries between 1500 and 1900 are, in this model, essentially a black box—we suppose an input and output, yet know little of the process which led from one to the other. The ecosystem was transformed, but how? and when? and, therefore, by whom? These remain unanswered questions, at least within the limits of the UBC model. The Newfoundland fishery ecologist G. Rose has used a similar model to generate biomass estimates for major species or groups of species for intermediate historical periods, 1450 to 1576 and 1578 to 1799. As he wisely admits, any such model is at best an “informed guesstimate”—but his does attempt to take into account climatic variations and the effects on each species of suspected change in the population of other species (Rose 2007:62–63, 194, 249). He explains his model briefly in an earlier specialist publication, but unfortunately does not document the assumptions made about anthropogenic impact, particularly on cod (Rose 2004). Economic historians will be uncomfortable with the method Rose seems to have used for estimating catches. One would have expected an evaluation of the sources and methods used by various specialists and a reasoned choice of which estimates make the most sense. Instead, he appears to have averaged various sources, some based on a critical reading of the economic sources, some not (Pope 1997, Rose 2007:260, n. 147). This leads, almost inevitably, to an underestimate of early modern catches and, presumably, an underestimate of anthropogenic impact on marine biomass in that period (Rose 2004:1555). To date, fisheries biologists have only partly accepted the emerging historical consensus about the impressive industrial scale of the early fishery (Fagan 2007, Pope 2006a, Richards 2005:547–573, Turgeon 1987). Biological models of the northwest Atlantic marine ecosystem in the historic period provide a reasonably consistent account of the extent of change between 1500 and 1900, but the account they offer remains, for various reasons, a black box for the intervening period. Historians and archaeologists working on the early modern fishery may be able to illuminate the inside of this particular black box, at least to the extent that they can clarify some of the processes of anthropogenic impact. The transatlantic, migratory, salt-cod fishery not only played an important role in the early modern world economy, it also had an impact on coastal ecosystems in North America. An historical archaeologist working on the landscape of the fishery in northern Newfoundland, is faced with several questions which intersect this issue of ecosystem change: What made a good fishing station? What was the impact on landscape and ecosystem of the seasonal local predation that followed the establishment and regular use of a particular fishing station? Such questions about the intersection of nature and culture are best approached within the kind of long-term framework proposed by Jackson and his colleagues. The answers will have to make sense within the overlapping assumptions of history and archaeology, but also within the framework of the biological sciences. This kind of inter-disciplinary cooperation takes patience, for an expert in one field may find colleagues in another naive, at best, particularly about the historiography of an unfamiliar discipline. What is news in one field may be an older story in another. If we are to advance our knowledge at the boundaries between disciplines, we may have to begin by bringing ideas together in a relatively simple way, without obsessing unduly about who said what first. The Early Modern, Shore-based, Salt-cod Fishery From about 1500 to 1800 or even later, European crews from Brittany, Normandy, the Basque Country, and the West of England seasonally exploited an inshore fishery in open boats, along the coasts of Atlantic Canada. They therefore depended on summer shore stations at Cape Breton, Gaspé, the lower north shore of the St Lawrence, southern Labrador, and several parts of Newfoundland. In any particular period, each European region preferred to exploit a particular part of the North American littoral (Pope 2003a). In the 17th century, for example, the Bretons fished in southern Newfoundland on what they called the Chapeau Rouge and in the north on the Petit Nord, the Atlantic coast of the Great Northern Peninsula. Breton crews were fishing at Cap Rouge on the Petit Nord, when Jacques Cartier passed by in 1541, and continued to dominate this productive fishery through the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht confined French fishers to northeastern Newfoundland, though French Basques in fact continued to exploit the island’s west coast. An adjustment of the treaty, in 1783, changed the boundaries of the French Shore to legalize this anomaly, but the Petit Nord remained within the adjusted French Shore. Here migratory Breton crews co-existed uneasily with a growing Anglo-Irish settler fishery until 1904, when France finally relinquished its rights to a seasonal shore fishery in Newfoundland (Pope 2008a). Thus, over the course of four centuries, migratory fishing crews from Brittany and part of Normandy created seasonal shore stations to salt and dry cod on the Petit Nord (Fig. 1). These stations were part of Europeans’ first use of North America, and the Petit Nord forms one of the oldest persistent European landscapes in Canada. An Archaeology of the Petit Nord is a multi-scalar research project designed to put the vestiges of these shore stations into the context of the documentary evidence, enabling us to ask about the manner in which such places were selected and constructed for resource extraction, about their relationships each had with one another, and about their evolution through time (Pope 2008a). Our analysis depends on the concepts of landmark—a persistent place, often for resource extraction—and of landscape—here, the material reflection of the social webs that link people and landmarks over time (Pope 2008b, Zedeño 2000). These archaeological concepts are a way of approaching the thought-provoking idea of a maritime cultural landscape, a term which emphasizes the interpenetration and interdependence of land and sea in coastal zones (Westerdahl 1991). Participant-observers in the early modern transatlantic fishery suggest that the fundamental geographical unit in this industry was the fishing room (Denys 1672, Yonge 1963). These were the shore stations needed for splitting, salting, and drying cod caught in daily voyages by boat crews working for a particular fishing master. Each fishing room can be thought of as a landmark or persistent place (Pope 2008b). Although significant numbers of fishers arrived seasonally in Newfoundland, they impinged on only a small fraction of its coasts. In the later 17th century, between 15,000 and 18,000 migratory fishermen visited Newfoundland annually: 5000 to 6000 along the English Shore of the Avalon Peninsula and adjacent Trinity Bay, and 10,000 to 12,000 from the various provinces of France, more or less evenly split between the south coast and the Petit Nord, with thousands more, mostly from Normandy, fishing offshore on the Grand Banks (Pope 2006a, Turgeon 1987). The marine areas exploited by early modern fishers represent a significant part of Newfoundland’s coast, perhaps as much as a third of it. However, the practice of salt processing at fishing rooms meant that a few shore stations could serve wider stretches of coast. Transatlantic visits were focused on relatively few fishing stations. The zone of exploitation was defined by the distance the crew of an open fishing shallop could conveniently sail or row, to and fro in a day or two, and still have time to fish: perhaps 10 to 20 km. In the French fishery, boat crews leaving the fishing station for more than a day were said to be fishing en dégrat, a term which later recurs as a Newfoundland toponym (Seary 2000:80–81). The concentration of migratory crews ashore constrained and directed the impact European fishers had on Newfoundland. On the one hand, concentration of European effort in a few places minimized conflict with Native peoples. On the other hand, it also created intense competitive pressure between European crews for access to fishing rooms. Much of Newfoundland’s coast is steep and rocky and where it is not, as on parts of the west coast, cod are more elusive. The combination of features that make a workable fishing room is actually rare: a safe place to moor or careen a ship, protected water for landing boats, proximity to reliable fishing grounds, accessible bait species, wood for stages and flakes, open cobble beaches or other rocky areas for drying fish, fresh water for the crew, and perhaps even easy access to alternate food resources (Pope 2008b). The fact that fishing rooms were at a premium is clear simply from the care 17th- and 18th-century colonial bureaucrats took to have them enumerated (Pope 2003b). We might also ask how fishing rooms were distributed, from a cultural point of view. How did fishing crews take temporary possession of valuable shore space without wasting time on conflict? The brief answer is the first-come first-served admiral system, an internationally recognized practice in the fishery from the mid-16th century on (Pope, in press). The admiral system encouraged both conservatism in the choice of fishing rooms and the cultural homogeneity typical within the various exploitation zones of Atlantic Canada (Pope 2003a). It lasted until the mid-18th century on the English Shore and until about 1800 on the Petit Nord (Bannister 2001, de la Morandière 1962:1105). The multi-faceted problematic of the distribution of fishing rooms provokes some smaller puzzles. For example, at Frenchman’s Cove on the Gray Islands (EeAv-03) in northern Newfoundland, Breton fishers appear to have invested quite a bit of labor in moving cobbles (or galets) to create defined areas for drying their fish (Fig. 2) (Pope 2006b). But why would they choose such a dangerously exposed harbor for a fishing room, where it is still difficult to land a boat? Perhaps there was some value in the relative isolation—for the Gray Islands are about 25 km offshore, and French fishers were at times in conflict with their fellow interlopers in this region, the Inuit of Labrador (Martijn 2009). Another attraction might have been a breeding colony of Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima) at the mouth of the harbor on the Isle aux Canes, which is today a provincial seabird reserve (Fig. 3; Cairns et al. 1989:24). Early migratory fishers showed a strong preference for fishing stations near seabird colonies. Every one of Newfoundland’s major present-day seabird reserves were once celebrated fishing grounds. Of course, this coincidence is over-determined, for the plankton-rich waters that once supported schools of capelin (Mallotus villosus) and many other marine species not only fed immense stocks of cod but also attracted breeding seabirds (Gaston and Jones 1998:3,64; Montevecchi 1993; Montevecchi and Myers 1995; Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:17; Tuck 1960:22). This coincidence goes beyond a simple joint response by two sets of predators (fishermen and seabirds) to a key independent variable, fish. There is unambiguous historical evidence that migratory European fishers harvested seabirds as well as cod. This secondary resource utilization means that the evolution of the early modern coastal ecosystem around Newfoundland had a more complicated trajectory than might, at first glance, be imagined on the assumption that fishers were only interested in fish. Ornithologists interested in northern seabirds have long noted predation by fishing crews in the northwestern Atlantic, particularly on the family of auks or Alcidae—notably the Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica), the Common Murre (Uria aalge), and the Razorbill (Alco torda), but also the Thick-billed Murre (Uria lomvia) and the Black Guillemot (Cepphus grylle) among existing species (Evans and Nettleship 1985, Fisher and Lockley 1954:56–92, Tuck 1960:212–220). Exploitation of the alcids by pre-historic peoples, e.g., of Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), is well attested in Newfoundland (Montevecchi et al. 2007:101–102, Tuck 1976: 65–70). However, Native peoples likely had a limited effect on bird populations, particularly to the extent that prehistoric human predation was directed at individual birds in passage rather than at breeding colonies (Fisher and Lockley 1954:66). Although it is difficult to trace European impact on the auks or other seabirds before 1750, some have suggested that in the early modern period such impact was also probably limited, because human populations were small (Evans and Nettleship 1985:441, 476). This view may be over-optimistic, to the extent that it overlooks the industrial scale of the early modern transatlantic fishery. If this article makes no more than two points, it will have accomplished its objective. First, the proximity of seabird colonies was one significant factor when early modern fishing crews chose shore stations. Second, a comparison of the location and toponymy of some of important early fishing stations and the present day distribution of breeding colonies raises the question of whether early modern fishers had a significant and enduring impact on the distribution of seabird colonies. The Great Auk: Seabirds as Seamen’s Provisions One of the earliest European descriptions of North American seabirds records human predation on the Great Auk (Fig. 4) and other nesting birds, likely Common Murres (Tuck 1960:47) . On his first voyage to New France, in 1534, Cartier visited the major Great Auk colony on Funk Island, which lies about 60 km east of Fogo Island, off Newfoundland’s northeast coast (Fig. 5). This breeding colony was known to European mariners at a very early date, for it features prominently on some of the earliest maps of the region: as Y. Dos Saves, “Isle of the Birds”, on Pedro Reinel’s map of about 1505 and as Ylhas das aves, “Islands of the Birds”, on a Reinel-influenced map of about 1520 (Harrisse 1900:74–75, 84–85, plates V, VII; Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:48–49). Cartier’s account makes it clear that he visited L’Isle des Ouaiseaulx for provisions. While auk specialists are familiar with such early accounts, they may be instructive for those new to these issues: Our two longboats were sent off to the island to procure some of the birds, whose numbers are so great as to be incredible, unless one has seen them; for although the island is about a league in circumference, it is so exceedingly full of birds that one would think they had been stowed there. In the air and round about there are a hundred times as many more as on the island itself. Some of these birds are as large as geese, being black and white with a beak like a crow’s. They are always in the water, not being able to fly in the air, inasmuch as they have only small wings about the size of one’s hand, with which however they move as quickly along the water as other birds fly through the air. And these birds are so fat that it is marvelous ... our two longboats were laden with them as with stones in less than half an hour. Of these, each of our ships salted four or five casks, not counting those we were able to eat fresh (Cartier 1534:293). The Great Auk was the original “penguin” and this familiar term was only subsequently applied to the unrelated but convergent bird family of the southern hemisphere, the Spheniscidae (Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:1). An account of Richard Hore’s expedition to the Island of Penguin, in 1536, confirms Cartier’s contemporary observations: The Island of Penguin ... is very full of rockes and stones, whereon they went and founde it full of great foules white and gray, as bigge as geese, and they sawe infinite nombers of egges. They drave [drove] a great nomber of the foules into their boates upon their sailes, and took up many of the egges, the foule they flead [flayed] ... They dressed and eate them, and found them to be very good and nourishing meate (Hakluyt 1589:207). Edward Hayes, who left the most plausible account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s transatlantic voyage of 1583, records their brief visit, suggesting that the practice of provisioning with Great Auks continued unabated, towards the end of the sixteenth century: We had sight of an Iland named Penguin, of a foule there breeding in abundance, almost incredible, which cannot flie, their wings not able to carry their body, being very large (not much lesse than a goose) and exceeding fat: which the French men use to take without difficulty upon that Iland, and to barrell them up with salt (Hayes 1589:398). Richard Whitbourne makes similar observations in his Discourse of Newfoundland of 1622 (Whitbourne 1622:122). Each account emphasizes the dense population of the birds, their large size, and their use as food provisions. To emphasize the latter points, each compares Great Auks with geese. The exploitation of breeding colonies is what is at issue here, even if offshore anthropogenic pressure on bird populations is also worth noting. The Acadian entrepreneur Nicolas Denys reported that 17th-century crews on the Grand Banks “fished” with a line for fulmars, petrels, guillemots, and Great Auks, to use as food (Denys 1672:266–268). Denys also mentions crews processing Great Auks to make train oil, although it is unclear whether this happened on the banks or inshore, at seabird colonies. These colonies were well known and often remarked. The toponyms “Isle of Birds” and “Penguin Island” recur on maps of Newfoundland through the 17th and into the 18th centuries; for example, on Augustine Fitzhugh’s map of 1693 (Fitzhugh 1693). They do not always refer to Funk Island, for nearby Wadham and Penguin Islands may also once have been breeding sites for the Great Auk as well, as the very name “Penguin Island” suggests (Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:4, Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:159). These smaller islands off Newfoundland’s northeast coast are now a sanctuary for Atlantic Puffins, Common Murres, Black Guillemots, Razorbills, and other seabirds (Cairns et al 1989:26). A report by William Taverner of conditions on Newfoundland’s south coast in 1713–1714 reports another Penguin Island off Cape La Hune, which also served as an important food resource for fishing crews: The Penoguine Islands, are in the summer time coverd with fowle, of that name, they are as large as any tame goose; their wings are soe small that they can never fly, they get their food by diveing in the sea. In the month of June, they come to those islands, which are flat on which they lay their eggs. The French from Placentia did yearly goe to those islands and load boats of 20 tunns with their eggs, which they sold at Placentia. They told me that a mann could not goe ashoar upon those islands without bootes, for otherwise they would spoile his leggs, that they were intirely covred with those fowles, soe close that a mann could not put his foot between them (Taverner 1718:233v–234). Again, in the early 18th century, an account of a Great Auk colony emphasizes both the dense occupation of breeding sites and the size of the birds, by making the comparison with geese. While the extinct Great Auk is the best known example of early seabird predation in Newfoundland waters, it was not the only species exploited by early fishing crews. Furthermore, the way it was exploited may not be entirely typical of early European impact on seabirds in the region, even if seabirds did remain a significant element of the Newfoundland diet for centuries (Anspach 1827:390–394; Montevecchi et al. 2007; Omohundro 1994:210–214, 272–273; Yonge 1963:55). Until the 19th century, the human population consisted of only 20,000 to 30,000 people at most, even counting seasonal migratory visitors (Head 1976:256–258). In other words, for several centuries, Newfoundland fishers may not have been numerous enough to seriously affect populations simply by eating seabirds. It is worth noting that recurrent predation on the Great Auk as a food resource does not seem to have been what precipitated the extinction of the species in Newfoundland waters. Taverner’s account suggests a flourishing colony on the south coast in 1713, after some 200 years of predation by European crews. Great Auks were still breeding at Funk Island, in 1767, but were extirpated there by about 1800 (Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:11). The crucial factor seems to have been the development of an annual commercial hunt for feathers, in the 1770s (Gaskell 2000:107, Nettleship and Evans 1985:66). In 1785, the Labrador furrier George Cartwright predicted “if a stop is not put soon to that practice, the whole breed will be diminished to almost nothing, particularly the penguins: for this is now the only island they have left to breed upon” (Cartwright 1792:319–320, Fisher and Lockley 1954:67–68, Thomas 1794:126–128). The Great Auk was extinct in Newfoundland by about 1800, and the last specimens of the species were taken in the 1840s, off Iceland, for wealthy collectors (Gaskell 2000:125–135, Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:13). The Great Auk was not a typical seabird nor, perhaps, was the history of its exploitation. To get a broader sense of the anthropogenic impact on the early modern Newfoundland marine ecosystem, it may be worth exploring complex predation in two key fishing zones: the English Shore of the Avalon Peninsula, in southeastern Newfoundland, and the Petit Nord, on the Atlantic coast of the Great Northern Peninsula. Seabird Colonies on the Avalon Peninsula The largest seabird colonies in Newfoundland today are all located on the Avalon Peninsula; indeed, two are among the largest seabird colonies in the world. A glance at their locations confirms the close proximity of important early fishing stations (Fig. 6). Witless Bay Ecological Reserve lies not far south of St John’s. It consists of three major islands: Gull, Green, and Great Islands. This area was the first choice in fishing station, among migratory fishing crews, until well into the 18th century, and was known as the Isles of Spear (Pope 2004:312). This is a very old Newfoundland toponym, associated with Cape Spear, just to the north, and derives from the Portuguese Cauo de la spera first recorded on the Oliveriana map of ca. 1505 (Harrisse 1900: 54). Popular etymology often translates spera as “hope” but it is more likely “waiting”—in other words, this was the place where you would meet the other fishing crews who had sailed with you (Seary 1971:30). The area is also associated with the mid-16th-century Portuguese toponyms Y. de los patas, “Goose/Auk Island”, probably Great Island, and R. das patas, “Goose/Auk River”, now probably the inlet of Calvert/Capelin Bay, and C. das patas, “Goose/Auk Cape”, near Ferryland (Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:169, Seary 1971:31). The islands of the Ecological Reserve do not have the kind of shallow slope needed by the flightless Great Auk to waddle up on to dry land—so the islands of the Witless Bay Reserve are not likely locations for a breeding colony (Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:7–9). The original Portuguese place names and the later name, Goose Island, for another nearby low islet, do suggest that the Great Auk at least frequented these waters, a suspicion confirmed not only by the 17th-century observer James Yonge, but also by zooarchaeological finds at nearby Ferryland (CgAf-02) (Hodgetts 2006; Seary 1971:71, 89; Yonge 1963:55). Today, the Witless Bay Reserve is a breeding area for 260,000 pairs of Atlantic Puffin, making this North America’s largest colony (Nettleship and Evans 1985, Newfoundland n.d.). It is also the second-largest breeding site in the world of Leach's Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) with 620,000 pairs, as well as for tens of thousands of Common Murres and Black-legged Kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) (Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:167–171). Baccalieu Island Ecological Reserve, at the northeastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula, is the largest seabird colony in Newfoundland and has been known for centuries as a productive location for egging and bird hunting (Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:161). Like the Isles of Spear, it was identified on early charts, including Reinel’s of ca. 1505, on which it first appears as Y. dos Bocalhas, “Island of Codfish” (Harrisse 1900:74–75). This enormous seabird colony lies just off Bay de Verde, the latter an important early fishing station (Pope 2004:316). Eleven species breed on Baccalieu Island, the greatest diversity of seabirds at any breeding site in Newfoundland or Labrador. It hosts one of the largest colonies of Leach's Storm Petrels in the world, with about 3.4 million pairs, and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador estimates that 75,000 pairs of Atlantic Puffins now occupy its grassy slopes (Newfoundland n.d.). Baccalieu also hosts significant populations of Black-legged Kittiwakes, Common Murres, and Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) (Cairns et al. 1989:11–12, Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:161–167). Cape St Mary’s Ecological Reserve, at the mouth of Placentia Bay, on the south coast of the Avalon Peninsula, is the third major seabird colony in the Avalon region. Although smaller than either the seabird colony at Witless Bay or the one at Baccalieu, it is currently supposed to comprise 24,000 Northern Gannets, 20,000 Black-legged Kittiwakes, and 20,000 Common Murres (Newfoundland n.d.). These cliff colonies are easy to see but less accessible to human predators than Baccalieu and the Witless Bay Islands. Cape St Mary’s may therefore not have been particularly attractive to early European fishers as a seabird colony, except insofar as this flagged the presence of marine resources. There is good archaeological evidence that the early colonists of Newfoundland’s English Shore used wild game, including seabirds, to complement their basic diet of biscuit or bread, butter or olive oil, salt meat, fish, and dried pulses (Pope 2004:344). Zooarchaeological remains from 17th-century contexts at Ferryland attest to the consumption of various seabirds, including Great Auk, Common and Thick-billed Murre, Razorbill, Black Guillemot, Common Eider, King Eider (Somateria spectabilis), White-winged Scoter (Melanitta fusca), Oldsquaw (Clangula hyemalis), Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), and even Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) and Greater Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus) (Hodgetts 2006:131). It is reasonable to suppose that migratory fishers would have augmented their equally bland diet in the same way, when they had the opportunity. A 1618 petition, one of the few documents surviving from Newfoundland’s early settlement period suggests that seabirds and seabird colonies had another, arguably more important, value to fishers. This petition, on behalf of the transatlantic fishing masters of several ports in England’s West Country, complains about the planters who had settled in Conception Bay, in the previous decade. The West Country “Adventurers” recite a familiar litany of complaints about competition for fishing rooms, the theft of stores, a poorly timed court of Admiralty, and even make the unlikely claim that the Newfoundland planters harbored pirates (Pope 2004:71, 203–206; Prowse 1895:100). They also make a significant complaint about what the planters do with seabirds: “That they have denied and letted the Petitioners from taking birdes upon the Island of Baccalieu, the flesh of which birds the Peticioners have heretofore used for baite until the ordinairie bait come upon that coast” (Western Adventurers 1618). By using seabird colonies to obtain bait, fishers would give themselves a head start on their cod fishery, before the capelin struck inshore, traditionally around the beginning of July. This early in the season, fishers looking for bait would have been preying on nesting birds. Among Atlantic Puffins or Common Murres, for example, the chicks do not arrive until late June, with the capelin (Ainley et al. 2002, Gaston and Jones 1998:66, Harris and Birkshead 1985, Lowther et al. 2002). Capelin and other small fish are a key food for the chicks of murres and puffins breeding in Newfoundland (Bradstreet and Brown 1985:287–301, Evans and Nettleship 1985:440, Montevecchi 1993:220, Nettleship and Evans 1985:136, Tuck 1960:121, 145). Chicks have a more restricted diet than adult alcids, and there would not be much evolutionary advantage to hatching the young before their preferred food arrived (Bradstreet and Brown 1985). For fishers, nesting seabirds were not merely supper, by the brace, by the dozen, or even salted by the barrel. They were bait, which means that they would have been harvested early in the fishing season, day after day, by the boatload (Vasconcellos et al 2002:8). This kind of predation on adult birds would have an especially severe impact on alcid species. Like humans and other top predators, the auks have low reproductive rates, usually bear only a single offspring at a time, mature slowly, and are normally relatively long-lived (Evans and Nettleship 1985:429). The impact of predation on adults is much more severe than predation by gulls on chicks or, indeed, than human predation on bird species with higher natural adult mortality and faster reproduction. In 1618, neither Bay de Verde nor Grates Cove was yet settled; the nearest “plantation”, to use the contemporary term, was further to the southwest in Conception Bay, near Harbour Grace (Pope 2004:51). The Western Adventurers’ petition therefore implies that resident planter fishermen were willing to travel as much as 60 km each way to harvest birds for bait. This distance, in turn, could be read as an indicator of the potential range of coastal seabird predation from seasonal fishing stations, as well. In other words, a good fishing room did not have to be immediately adjacent to a seabird colony to benefit from it as a bait supply; such a source of bait might be useful, even a day or two distant. It is striking that in the later 18th century, when magistrates in St John’s banned the taking of birds for feathers and eggs on Funk Island, it was still permissible to take birds for bait—presumably, by this time, mostly Common Murres rather than Great Auks (Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:12, Thomas 1794:128). In the 1830s, the great American naturalist John James Audobon witnessed fishermen en route to Labrador taking boat-loads of gannets for bait, at the Bird Rocks near the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St Lawrence (Fisher and Lockley 1954:79–81). Auk specialists have noted that the Common Murre’s highly aggregated pattern of breeding puts it at great risk and that some murre colonies might well have been eradicated by early modern migratory fishing crews (Nettleship and Evans 1985:88–89). The Atlantic Puffin runs similar risks and was doubtless regularly taken by fishing crews since Europeans began to exploit Newfoundland (Nettleship and Evans 1985:135). In this light, it is not surprising that important seabird colonies, like Baccalieu Island, Witless Bay, and Funk Island, were much reduced by ca. 1900 and only rebounded with modern administrative protection, in the 20th century (Evans and Nettleship 1985:444–445, Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:182–183). Sea Birds on the Petit Nord Again, a map of seabird colonies in northeastern Newfoundland reflects the proximity of important early fishing stations (Fig. 3) . Extant colonies in this region are, however, orders of magnitude smaller than the major seabird colonies of the Avalon, discussed above (Cairns et al. 1989:24). Hare Bay Islands Ecological Reserve is currently a breeding colony for a few hundred Common Eiders, as well as various gulls and terns (Newfoundland n.d.). Although it is not far from the historic French fishing stations of Grands oies and Petits oies, that is “Big Geese” and “Little Geese”, on either side of the mouth of Hare Bay, the islands of the present reserve may not have been particularly attractive to migratory fishermen, given their inland location in a shallow bay. The two “geese” toponyms may tell us more about early modern seabirds than present day remnant colonies, given that Great Auks are consistently described as geese in early accounts. Early European fishers certainly appreciated the presence of birds in this region. Note, for example, the toponym Cornelis Wytfliet (1605) used on his early 17th-century map of Nova Francia, for the important fishing station of Grand St Julien, next to Grandois: Y. de S. Iulien doiseaux, “Island of St. Julien of the Birds” (Fig. 7). This island might be present-day Goose Island, in the mouth of Grandois Harbour, just north of Grand St. Julien, or it could be St. Julien Island, just off Grand St. Julien itself (Seary 2000:99–101, 153). Neither are breeding colonies today, although the archaeological vestiges of the French migratory fishery are still evident and all are now reported as archaeological sites (EgAw-01, EgAw-02, and EgAw-03) (Cairns et al 1989, Pope 2007:38–45). The toponym Coromandieres, “Cormorant Colony”, survives not far away, for two islands just north of the important migratory French station at Fischot. The islands were so named by 1675 (Seary 2000:71). An early 20th-century observer noted that the name “cormorant” was “applied generally to any of the large voracious sea birds, of which there are many species, such as the auk, the gannet, the puffin, etc.” (Seary 2000:71). The Cormandier Islands are today home to a small colony of Black Guillemots—the only alcids breeding today in the region and the only member of the family which does not form large colonies (Cairns et al. 1989). The early toponymy and cartography of the Petit Nord suggest that there were once significant concentrations of seabirds there, now exterminated or substantially reduced. Whether or not these were breeding colonies is a question for further research, biological and, perhaps, archaeological. To the historical archaeologist, there is no obvious environmental explanation of why the present bird colonies of northern Newfoundland should be so much smaller than those of the Avalon Peninsula, or Funk Island, or even the limited colonies that have re-established themselves near Fogo (Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:159–161). The region is skirted by the Labrador Current, producing upwellings at headlines and islands that promote the kind of strong primary production upon which seabirds depend (Legrow 1999, Nettleship and Evans 1985:57–61). The waters of the Petit Nord were, in the past, spectacularly productive—as evidenced simply by the fact that, in the 17th century, this fishing zone produced as much dried cod as the English Shore of the Avalon Peninsula (Pope 2006a). There appears to be no shortage of terrain in the region suitable for breeding birds of various species. Common Murres, for example, need steep rocky coasts and that sums up most of the Petit Nord (Tuck 1960:42). Eirik’s Saga, recounting the Norse exploration of the region in the early 11th century, mention a certain Straum Island, where “there were so many birds on it that one could scarcely set foot between their eggs” (Magnusson and Pálsson 1965:95, Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:47). Today, we have a tendency to think of the Great Auk as a bird of Funk Island, the place where it is commemorated in the theater of our collective memory. The biological consensus of the mid-twentieth century minimized the number of Great Auk colonies, recognizing five in the Old World but, curiously enough, only two “known” in the New World (Nettleship and Evans 1985:64, Peters and Burleigh 1951:246–249). Closer attention to historical accounts has led recent specialists to accept that this species did breed elsewhere in Newfoundland, for example on the south coast near Cape la Hune (Gaskell 2000:5, Gaston and Jones 1998:123, Montevecchi and Kirk 1996:4). Is there a biological reason to suppose that these birds did not once breed on the Northern Peninsula as well? Where is this more likely than a place that early fishers called Grands oies? One might justifiably ask if a goose wasn’t sometimes just a goose. In 1578, Anthony Parkhurst did list “wild geese” as a Newfoundland resource, so this is a possible candidate as the bird that once occupied Grands oies (Parkhurst 1578:9). The Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) breeds in Newfoundland, but geese are not important game birds in most of Newfoundland (Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:219, 226). Furthermore they breed in marshy areas, usually inland (Mowbray et al. 2002, Peters and Burleigh 1951:82–85). One of the surviving members of the auk family would seem more likely, especially given the size dichotomy in the toponyms Grand oies and Petit oies. Together the alcids represent about two thirds of Newfoundland’s seabird population (Gaston and Jones 1998:53). Although a few Thick-billed Murres do breed in Newfoundland, often as minor participants in colonies occupied jointly with their cousins the Common Murres, the former breed primarily further north (Gaston and Jones 1998:57, Tuck 1960:124). Dovekies (Alle alle) are called “Little Auks” in Europe, but they breed exclusively in the arctic, never south of Labrador (Gaston and Jones 1998:161–168, Nettleship and Evans 1985:78–79). Black Guillemots do not breed in large colonies, even if they were also exploited by casual hunting and egging in the early modern period (Nettleship and Evans 1985:116–121). That leaves Razorbills, Puffins, or the Common Murre—all auk species whose present breeding range in eastern Newfoundland and the Gulf of St Lawrence brackets but does not include the Petit Nord (Cairns et al 1989:24; Nettleship and Evans 1985:70–71, 84–92, 129–133). Razorbills and Common Murres are the same size, at about 40 cm long and weighing just under 1 kg. Puffins are slightly smaller, though it is hard to imagine that they would be considered “petit” in comparison to the murres. Again, the toponymic dichotomy might suggest a contrast with the extinct and much larger Great Auk, weighing 4 to 5 kg (Gaston and Jones 1998:121). At more than 3 kg, the average Northern Gannet is much bigger than Common Murres or Puffins (Mowbray 2002). So perhaps Common Murres were contrasted with a colony of Northern Gannets or some other, larger non-alcid seabirds, less useful to fishers? (Anspach 1819; Montevecchi and Tuck 1987:165, 175; Tuck 1960:123, 214). Or perhaps the Grands oies/Petits oies dichotomy referred to the size of bird colonies in or near these harbors, which are themselves physically about the same size. In the end, the early European toponymy of the Petit Nord appears to have celebrated three or four notable concentrations of birds—even if we are not sure today exactly which species were seen to be worth celebrating. The archaeological remains of the 18th and 19th-century seasonal fishery, excavated at the major Petit Nord fishing station of Champs Paya in Crouse (EfAx-09) have produced zooarchaeological evidence of avian remains. Domestic species are best represented in the 19th-century assemblage; chicken and turkey are, in fact, predominant (Swinarton 2007). This preponderance of domestic fowl might suggest that fishers of this late period had been industrialized, compared to their predecessors, in the sense that they were less interested in or, perhaps, less capable of augmenting their diet with hunting. This evidence is also consistent with reduced local avian populations. The 19th-century assemblage does contain some wild species, including seabirds, and wild species are even more prominent in our 18th-century and mixed late-18th/19th century faunal assemblages (Noël 2010). The data are most easily summarized in tabular form (Table 1). Many of these faunal remains exhibit cut-marks, suggesting that we can assume that they provide evidence about human consumption, although they are ambiguous with respect to bait preparation vs food preparation. As with the avian collection from 17th-century Ferryland, a striking range of species are represented. With respect to seabirds, the 18th-century evidence tells us that Breton crews fishing at Champs Paya in Cape Rouge Harbour were able to obtain Atlantic Puffin, Black Guillemot, Common Murre, and Great Auk, besides various gulls, ducks, and loons. Bearing in mind that all such French fishing stations were, by international treaty, seasonal establishments only, this evidence would suggest that the contemporary summer range of these species encompassed Cap Rouge (today Crouse). It is, however, by no means evidence that these alcids were breeding at Cap Rouge Harbour, for each of these birds seems to be quite capable of foraging at some distance from their colonies. Yet the presence, at EfAx-09 in Crouse, of the remains of alcids of various species, including one extinct and several which do not breed in the region today, is suggestive and would certainly be consistent with the survival of a breeding colony of one or more of these alcid species at Grandois or St Juliens, 30 km to the north. Ecosystem Implications of Industrial Seabird Predation If we accept the historical evidence that migratory fishers used seabird colonies as bait depots, at least early in the fishing season, we can actually make a rough estimate of the number of seabirds that they might have taken. For example, suppose that at half the fishing stations, every fish caught early in the season, in June and early July, was taken with a portion of a seabird, used as bait. Suppose also that the fishers who used such avian bait did so for about one quarter of the season and that they used about 100 gm, or a tenth of an adult bird, to bait each hook, but that they lost their bait half the time. With these assumptions, our estimate would be that the number of seabird chicks taken for bait would be about one fortieth of the total catch, expressed as individual fish. In the late 17th century, crews fishing on the Petit Nord and along the English Shore each produced something like 160,000 to 200,000 dry quintals of fish annually—and salt fish production in these zones is not likely to have been much less in the late 16th century, a period which was retrospectively remembered as a boom in the fishery (Pope 2004:33, 2006a:20). Using the conversion rate attested by the experienced early 17th-century fishing master, Richard Whitbourne, this would represent 2 to 2.5 million individual fish (Whitbourne 1622:176). That would imply that fishing crews would have taken something like 50,000 to 60,000 adult birds from each exploitation zone, every year, for bait. To this we might add whatever they took for food provisions—besides eggs, perhaps another 20,000 adult birds, if each fisherman ate half a seabird, once a week, for eight weeks. These are only guesstimates—but they suggest the magnitude of the issue. Would such a level of exploitation have been enough to seriously impact seabird populations in each fishing zone, over the course of a century or two, between 1550 and 1750? To the extent that seabirds were taken for bait, as well as for provisioning, it seems likely that European migratory fishing crews trimmed back seabird colonies near their fishing rooms just as they trimmed back the surrounding forest (Pope 2008b). In the light of our suspicions about European fishers’ industrial-scale predation on seabirds, we might challenge the historical reality of a model for the Newfoundland marine ecosystem which excludes seabirds, as the UBC Fisheries Centre ecosystem model tends to do. On the other hand, considered biological opinion appears to be that seabirds are an epiphenomenon of the underwater ecosystem around Newfoundland (Burke et al. 2002:30, Rose 2007:139). When the fishery is in good health, seabirds reflect the bounty of these waters, but populations of the key avian species—Great Auk, Atlantic Puffin, Common Murre, and Northern Gannet—were never high enough to significantly affect populations of their fishy prey, such as capelin, on which cod depend as well. We know, from studies elsewhere, that amputation of an important species from an ecosystem can have significant positive effects on certain other seemingly unrelated species. At Spitzbergen, for example, anthropogenic pressure on whale populations in the 17th and 18th centuries actually benefited certain seabirds in the long term (Hacquebord 1999). A similar effect, in the 20th century, has been mooted for Newfoundland waters (Nettleship and Evans 1985:91). But no one has shown the reverse, that exogenic pressure on seabird stocks can have a significant effect on fish or marine mammal populations. Modeling of the Newfoundland marine ecosystem seems to suggest that predation by seabirds on capelin etc. would have had only a small effect on the trajectory of cod stocks. Still, we should not lose sight of the fact that the shore-based cod fishery involved a complex interaction with local ecosystems, creating predatory pressure on creatures used for bait, as well as on fishers’ target species. If we are going to see inside the black box of ecosystem evolution between 1500 and 1900, we should be looking seriously at all kinds of anthropogenic impact. Nor were cod the only commercial marine species: by 1600, human predation on marine animals on the coasts of Newfoundland was already a complex business, involving local seabirds and the largest marine mammals, as well as fish. Those interested in the evolution of the North American maritime cultural landscape will find it worth considering what Europeans eliminated or seriously reduced in the early centuries of exploitation of Newfoundland waters, including the largest marine mammals—Walrus and Right and Bowhead Whales—and the largest avian marine species, the Great Auk. A scatter of evidence suggests that other seabirds may also have been seriously affected, particularly in the centuries between 1550 and 1750. The evidence we have does not amount to definitive proof of an extirpated bird colony at a specific harbor on Newfoundland’s Petit Nord—but if we wait for the kind of evidence we have for recent colonies, we will wait a very long time before we will be able to begin to make real progress in understanding the long-term collapse of coastal ecosystems. The hypothesis that there were once significant seabird colonies, perhaps of Great Auks, Common Murres, and/or their alcid relatives, on the Petit Nord is potentially verifiable. W.A. Montevecchi’s success in recovering Great Auk remains from the defunct breeding colony on Funk Island suggests that it might be worth attempting some “historical biology” on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, where historical archaeology has helped us to better understand the fishing rooms, used for centuries by migratory crews. Acknowledgments The author acknowledges the support of SSHRC Canada, the Provincial Archaeology Office of Newfoundland and Labrador, Memorial University, and the Smallwood Foundation for Newfoundland Studies, for research reported here. He is also thankful to his MA student Stéphane Noël for providing faunal data from his thesis. He thanks Bill Montevecchi and his students for their helpful and encouraging comments on a seminar presentation of this material and D.N. Nettleship for his detailed comments on an early draft of this paper and for the many references he suggested. Literature Cited Ainley, D.G., D.N. Nettleship, H.R. Carter, and A.E. Storey. 2002. Common Murre (Uria aalge). No. 666, In A. Poole (Ed.). The Birds of North America Online. Available online at http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/666/articles/introduction?searchterm=Common%20Murre. Accessed 15 June 2009. Anspach, L.A. 1827. 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