Fish — particularly Atlantic cod — were extraordinarily abundant in the Gulf of St.

Lawrence in the sixteenth century.

The cod stocks of the North Atlantic at this period were so thick that European fishermen had been harvesting them for decades, and the water around any island in the gulf would have been full of fish for anyone with the means and knowledge to catch them.

The challenge was not that the island was biologically barren.

The challenge was acquiring food in an environment where acquiring it required skills and tools and knowledge that Marguerite did not have through training and could only develop through desperate improvisation.