IF cod were any easier to catch it would emerge from the sea boxed and ready for the freezer. A more slothful fish is difficult to find. If it can be bothered, cod can grow up to 200lb in weight and live for 30 years. But with modern fishing methods, it seldom gets the chance.

Cod likes to take it easy, the pure white flesh proof of its lack of exercise and muscle tone. On a good day it may swim through shallow waters at about one knot, mouth wide open, eating anything which floats its way, including smaller, slower cod.

Surprisingly, few things in the wild feed on cod, probably too disgusted by its general apathy. A natural anti-freeze it produces allows it to inhabit the coldest seas and, with an average female producing nine million eggs in a spawning, it should be a fish destined to endure.

In fact, for most of the past 120 million years it has done just that, becoming a teeming presence in the seas of the northern hemisphere. A century ago it was so abundant that a French writer claimed that if every egg spawned actually hatched, it would only take three years to fill the entire sea and he would be able to walk on fish.

But next month the European Union will set a fish quota limiting what each country's fishermen can catch in a year. There are also calls to place a moratorium on fishing for cod, which is fast becoming an endangered species. If the decline continues, fry-up fans are as likely to see panda in their fish suppers as they are cod and chips.

The fishermen claim the moves will ruin the industry.

For such a dull and lifeless fish, the humble cod boasts a history as rich as a mornay sauce.

Because of this fish continents have been discovered, kings' heads have rolled and wars have been waged. It has sustained armies and fed the poor, raised a cod aristocracy and is currently breaking banks.

It was the Vikings who first discovered the value of cod 1,000 years ago when they embarked on their great voyages of discovery. Five epic trips were made to America between 985 and 1011, during which time they found rocky Greenland and barren Newfoundland.

The reason they survived? They'd packed their boats with dried cod, stacked like planks on their longboats for the long sea journey, and they dined on the fresh fish which virtually leapt into their boats in the shallow coastal seas off America.

In the Middle Ages, Basque businessmen thrived on a trade of cod, which not only tasted good but also preserved exceptionally well. And by then the British had caught on and their pockets bulged with the money fish catches brought in.

During the Catholic fervour of medieval times, cod kept the population going on the "lean days" - every Friday and the 40 days of Lent - when sex and eating meat were forbidden.

The fishing "gold rush" of the 1550s, when Newfoundland provided 60 per cent of cod for Europe, prompted a shipbuilding boom the likes of which had never been seen before and has never been seen since.

The fish boom led to a salt shortage and the imposition of a salt tax in France and Britain. In France, the tax stuck in the throat like a fishbone and was so unpopular it was a principal grievance leading to the French Revolution.

Later, the cold fish became popular in hot climates, particularly among the slaves working the sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

In 1677, it came to the notice of King Charles that those confounded colonists were selling cod to Spain instead of England. The New Englanders replied to his protest letter by sending him 1,000 cod and a polite note saying they would do what they liked; the first seed of dissent which would lead to American independence.

Jewish traders made their mark with cod in the 1830s when they invented fish and chip stalls in the east end of London. The arrival of steam power and refrigeration meant fish could now be chased and caught at speed, not that this would make much difference to the tardy cod.

But by the 1890s, fish stocks in the North Sea were falling fast, so trawler men simply went further afield to the seas around Iceland.

Clarence Birdseye didn't further the survival of cod in the 1930s when he invented frozen fish fingers and the world went mad for them. Only the Second World War gave the fish any respite as it inadvertently fell under the protection of the German U-boat.

The 1950s saw Iceland get tough with foreign fishermen and impose a 12-mile exclusion zone. Gunboats were dispatched with British trawlers and the first of the cod wars occurred, a conflict which would be repeated twice more.

By 1981, 287,000 tons of cod were being harvested from the North Sea. A decade later the figure had dropped to 86,000.

On December 15, Europe is expected to cut the British quota to well below last year's figure of 80,000 tons. Fishermen fear it could be as high as 30 per cent, which they claim could kill the industry.

The new quota will be based on scientific research gathered by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Agiculture, Fisheries and Food says: "They tell us what the state of play is with the stocks at the moment and that will be used as a template by Brussels. Stocks are teetering on the brink where they may not recover. It's a delicate balancing act to maintain the industry and the stocks.

"The number of fish has declined and so has their size. They don't have enough time to breed or grow."

But North-East fishermen are far from convinced that cod stocks are as bad as the scientists believe. "We don't think it's that bad," says Richard Brewer, director of Whitby's Anglo-Scottish Fish Producer Organisation. "We are currently seeing an improved class of fish. But we are very worried about the proposed cuts. Cod is our mainstay, accounting for 70 per cent of our income.

"Global warming could have something to do with the decline. The sea temperature is a lot warmer than it should be, which has seen cod migrate south into the English Channel. We just hope this is one of nature's foibles."

Fishermen in the region have been continuously lobbying the Government and Europe to persuade minsiters not to reduce quotas. But they are also preparing for the worst.

"We are looking at alternatives - prawns, flatfish, monks - they are in the North Sea but you have to go a lot further out," says Mr Brewer.

But, as far as cod goes, it could soon become the fish that got away.