Celie Hughes dreads the day when her sons will be forced to leave their small community, Green Island Brook, high up on Newfoundland’s northern peninsula. She says it will devastate her but believes it is inevitable.

In the spring the federal government shut down the cod fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the second time. The first closure was a decade ago. That first moratorium almost killed places like Green Island Brook but not quite. The community never fully recovered from the first cod moratorium and its population dropped from three hundred and fifty people to less than a hundred and fifty. But some fishermen managed to hang on and when a smaller, very limited cod fishery reopened, it was enough to keep the Hughes family going.

Years ago when cod was plentiful, Celie and her late husband raised a family of nine on that fishery and they raised five of their sons as fishermen. Gideon, Stewart, Wayne, Louis and Marvin share four lobster licenses among them. The reopening of the cod fishery a few years ago prompted them to pool their money to buy a long liner that could fish cod as well as drag for scallops. The boat is still not paid off, and the closure of the cod fishery, which accounted for forty per cent of their income, has made life very difficult.

Land and Sea visited the family during the lobster season and again months later to see how they were managing. None of the men want to leave their homes and their community. They can’t see how they would be much better off working elsewhere with rent or a mortgage to pay but still they need more money to make ends meet if they stay.

This story portrays the difficult decisions each has had to make and how a couple of them came up with a compromise they hope will work out for them.