Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.07.1994, Blaðsíða 3

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 15. júlí 1994 • 3
Jennifer Roed Wins Top Honor
Gifted student gets
Governor General’s Medal
At the Shaftesbury High School Con-
vocation June 30, 1994, Jennifer
Christine Roed was awarded the
Governor General’s Medal for the highest
average in Grade 12, 94.8%. She also received
a scholarship to the Faculty of Science at the
University of Manitoba, medals for the highest
marks in History, English and French and an
award for Challenge French and Creative
Writing. Jennifer will be attending the U. of M.
Faculty of Science in September. Other inter-
ests are Art, Cheer Leading, Taekwondo,
Creative Writing and teaching Sunday School.
Jennifer is the daughter of Chris and Donna
Roed. Granddaughter of Sigurlin and Sverre
Roed and of Arnold and the late Mildred
Bulloch.
he Govemor-General’s Medal is presented
to the student who achieves the highest
average in the graduating class. Jennifer has
managed to achieve an average of 94.8%. She
will graduate with a total of 27 credits. She
loves to leam and uses her academic gifts to
go the “extra mile”. She demonstrates a strong
commitment to school and class activities. She
demonstrates a unique sensitivity toward
appreciating and valuing others and the differ-
ent perspectives they bring to a leaming com-
munity.
School activities have included social com-
mittee, student council, cheerleading, cross-
country, track and field, indoor track, weight
training, and Shaftesbury Students Against
Dmg Abuse.
he is also a conscientious community vol-
unteer — UNICEF, North End Com-
munity Mission Centre, Read Canada,
Children’s Hospital, Winnipeg Harvest and
Centre for Speech and Hearing Disorders.
She finds time to relax and enjoy communi-
ty baseball, jazz dancing, swimming and
Taekwondo.
Vanishing Cod j Cont’d.
Many factors
here are other factors in
that delicately balanced
ecosystem that have also
played a part in the decline of the
cod. Cod and capelin, its main
diet, are closely connected. If the
cod and the capelin can’t get
together, then the cod suffer. They
can be separated by changes in the
ocean temperature, which has
been fluctuating considerably in
the last few years, especially in
Canadian waters, and seals and
whales eat capelin as well as cod.
In addition, the last few years have
been low spawning years for the
cod making a recovery of the
stocks more difficult.
Even so, the main cause is
overfishing and the main part of
the solution to the problem is to
cut fishing quotas even further
until a revival occurs, however
*ong it takes. This could take as
long as 20 years, but could happen
more quickly if nature co-oper-
ates.
Fishing is and has been for a
long time a part of what Jakobsson
calls the delicate ecosystem of the
North Atlantic, but it is also in a
Sense an interference in it. “You
must always play within the mles
Ihat nature is giving you at any
sPecific time,” he said. “You must
harvest in a way to avoid upsetting
Bie delicate ecosystem.”
At the moment, that means
harvesting whales and seals as
Well as fish. The intemational ban
°n whaling and the Canadian
hanning of the seal hunt are pure-
ly political decisions, he said.
There is no scientific reason today
not to resume whaling for certain
species, such as the minke whale
and there has never been any sci-
f ntific reason to curtail sealing.
But most importantly, and
most unfortunately for the fishing
industry, it means catching even
fewer cod than we are now. He is
critical of his own govemment for
refusing to recognize the cod
problem earlier and, for political
reasons, refusing to act on the
advice of its scientists to cut quo-
tas.
He has high praise for the
Canadian govemment, which he
says was the only govemment of a
North Atlantic nation to limit
quotas to 20 per cent of estimated
stocks, the maximum level he
thinks should be allowed ever
when there is an abundance of
cod The problem that Canada ran
into was that it badly overestimat-
ed the cod population
Estimates
uch estimates can often be
off as much as ten or 15 per
cent and a mistake of that
magnitude now would pose a
strong threat to the survival of the
cod.
Beyond accepting the bitter
necessity of drastically reduced cod
quotas and the fact that their only
option now is to survive on other
sources of income, his advice to
fishermen and to govemments of
nations that use the sea’s resources
is to “harvest carefully. Harvest
everything, but at a very low rate.”
In any case, there are, as
Jakobsson points out, plenty of
other fish in the sea that are not in
danger — haddock, halibut, ocean
perch, capelin, even, perhaps, her-
ring now. They can provide alter-
natives until the cod come back.
Also, at least according to the
Icelanders, some of them taste a lot
better.
— Tom Oleson
Jakobsson has been counting físh and tracking them around the ocean for 20 years.
Captain Ágústsson, on bridge ofthe Otto Wathne, doesn't believe cod stocks are shrinking.