| Sumario: | In the sixteenth century, European mariners established a permanent commercial fishery in the northwest Atlantic which they called Terra Nova. While scholars have reconstructed its history, an important question remains unanswered: what impact did the seasonal fishery have on coastal ecologies in its early years? This article lays out the potential for transformative impacts on coastal biology and geography caused by the seasonal arrival of European fishworkers, and how the situation compares to elsewhere in the Atlantic. It then evaluates various instances of known transformation, including the construction of fishing camps; the introduction of Afro-Eurasian plants and animals; harvesting wood and food around fishing camps; and the imposition of Christian names and geographies on the coastal landscape. It concludes that the impact of fishwork on Terra Nova was likely greater than historians have acknowledged, even if it remained significantly limited compared to elsewhere in the sixteenth-century Atlantic.
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