Gadus Associates
Why "Gadus"? -- And why all the Codfish?

When we founded Gadus Associates, in 1987, we wanted a name that said "fish", "fisheries" and "science". Here in Atlantic Canada, the main resource species is the codfish (at least, it was until most of the cod fisheries were closed in 1993!). So important is it, both commercially and in the culture of the fishing communities, that to most fishermen "fish" means cod and "fishing" means fishing for cod. Indeed, throughout the North Atlantic, it was cod and herring that supported the fisheries for centuries until people developed ways of preserving lesser fish. And it was the cod fisheries that first drew Europeans to northeastern North America -- not for nothing does a "sacred cod" hang in the Massachusetts State House, reminding legislators of the origin of the Bay State's wealth. If Amsterdam was built on herring bones, as was said long ago, then the foundation of both Canada and the United States was salt cod.

We had no trouble deciding to name the company after the codfish but "cod" didn't have quite the scientific ring we were after, so we chose instead the biological name of the species. Every animal has one, written in Latin and selected by whoever first prepared a formal description of the type. In the case of the cod, this scientific name (chosen by Carolus Linnaeus, the inventor of this system, over 200 years ago) is Gadus morhua and so we became Gadus Associates.

Having named the company after the codfish, we put one on our logo and now we use its image as our symbol -- on our Web site and elsewhere. And that's why it's "Gadus".

Since people who know Atlantic Canadian fisheries research sometime ask us about it, we can clear the air here: Gadus Associates does NOT own or operate the research ship "Gadus Atlantica". The ship and the company are both named after the same fish but we have no other connection.