[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

To address your original question, there are two main reasons that fishermen can (for awhile) continue to make large hauls in a depleted resource. The first is improved technology making it easier to find and harvest the last remaining large stocks. The second is that these endgame efforts deplete the "feeder" stock which still has to mature to be the main breeding stock, but the larger fish (the normal main breeding stock) have already been taken.

Interesting that the seal population along the New England coast which was once reduced to a tiny population has returned to where rookeries are everywhere. The seals are catching their fish in a "depleted" stock without the help of any advanced technology. I wonder how that works.

[cogitator]

Interesting that the seal population along the New England coast which was once reduced to a tiny population has returned to where rookeries are everywhere. The seals are catching their fish in a "depleted" stock without the help of any advanced technology. I wonder how that works.

Are the seals exclusively existing on cod, or perhaps utilizing a variety of fish in their diet? Are the seal populations similar to what they were before the establishment of the New England and Canadian fisheries?

A bit more info can be found here:

THE GROWING SEAL POPULATION IN THE GULF OF MAINE

For one thing, it indicates that the low seal populations were due to hunting, not a reduction in fish stocks. There was actually a seal bounty, according to the article. I didn't know that.

Another article on the Web says this about what the seals eat (hooded seals, which are an Atlantic species):
"The hooded seal eats mainly deep water fish including redfish, Greenland turbot, herring, capelin, cod, halibut, and flounder. Its diet also includes shrimp, octopus, and mussels."

Doesn't sound too exclusively limited to one species, so that probably explains why the populations are increasing.