When Corey and Almond Mood took over the family business some 20 years ago, they knew they had to make some changes. Until then, Mood Fisheries, which was started by their father in 1970 in Woods Harbour on the southwest tip of Nova Scotia, had done lobster and little else. But the lobster fishery in Nova Scotia, which is only open six months a year, "wasn't going to be enough to survive on," recalls Almond. So in addition to buying and selling lobsters, the Moods decided to focus on the big pelagics that migrate up off of Nova Scotia in the summer and early fall, a time of year when the local lobster fishery is closed. Swordfish all feed heavily off shoals of mackerel, herring and squid that are found in the northwest Atlantic as the waters warm each year.

The Moods were especially interested in helping revive the local sword fishery, which had fallen on hard times because Spanish fleets were wildly overfishing the same stock in other parts of the Atlantic. Fortunately, pressure from Canadian and U.S. sword fishermen eventually resulted in stronger management measures and today sword populations in the western North Atlantic have sharply rebounded. "Our stocks are in great shape," says Almond. "There's so much fish out there now our boats have to go target tuna to avoid exceeding their sword quota. We've never seen so much swordfish."

The stocks are in such good shape that this June, the Marine Stewardship Council certified the harpoon component of the Nova Scotia sword fishery, the first swordfish fishery in the world to receive the coveted certification. The harpooners land only about 10 percent of the total Nova Scotia sword quota, which has been about 1,200 metric tons in recent years, and is available from June to September. The company sells all its sword catch fresh, primarily to distributors in the Northeast.

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