Grand Banks of Newfoundland

The Grand Banks are one of the world's richest fishing grounds, supporting Atlantic cod, swordfish, haddock and capelin, as well as shellfish, seabirds and sea mammals.

[citation needed] Overfishing in the late 20th century caused the collapse of several species, particularly cod, leading to the closure of the Canadian Grand Banks fishery in 1992.

By approximately 13,000 years ago the majority of the ice had melted, leaving the Grand Banks exposed as several islands extending for hundreds of kilometres.

[citation needed] On 18 November 1929, the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake struck the southwestern part of the Grand Banks bordering the Laurentian Channel, causing an underwater landslide which resulted in extensive damage to transatlantic cables and generated a rare Atlantic tsunami that struck the south coast of Newfoundland, claiming 29 lives on the Burin Peninsula.

[11] Petroleum reserves have also been discovered and a number of oil fields are under development in this region, most notably the Hibernia, Terra Nova, and White Rose projects.

[15] Semi-fictional depictions of fishermen working on the Grand Banks can be found in Rudyard Kipling's novel Captains Courageous (1897) and in Sebastian Junger's non-fiction book The Perfect Storm (1997).

It is also featured in The Grey Seas Under, a non-fiction book by Canadian author Farley Mowat about the ocean-going maritime salvage tug Foundation Franklin.