Yes.
As was mentioned before in this committee in Moncton, the survey started in 1988. They had a trial survey, the annual science survey. Over the years we've refined the tool to assess the biomass. At the beginning of this survey, in 1988, there were about 150 stations throughout the southern gulf. Science was focusing the survey on the fishing grounds at that time, and the fishing areas were smaller than the entire southern gulf. We continued that methodology until roughly the late 1990s. At one point, we started to increase the number of stations as the fishery was expanding into the margin areas of the fishing ground. In 2010 there are 350 stations, so we are covering a lot more area.
The point the stakeholders are making is probably that in 2005 we had what we called a scientific framework, through which we reviewed the recipe that we used to do the stock assessment. At that time, the scientific experts around the table came to the conclusion that starting in 2005 we were covering all the areas for snow crab in the southern gulf. So we do sample the 35,000 square kilometres of the areas in which you can find snow crab. As a matter of fact, since 1999 we have had 35,000 square kilometres of coverage in the southern gulf, but prior to that the coverage was about 25,000 square kilometres. This is the difference.
At that time we decided to do some back-calculations. If we wanted to make a comparable biomass estimate from the present to the past, we had to do a back-calculation from 1988 until 1998 for a comparable biomass. It's probably this element the stakeholders are talking about when they say that science has changed its methodology. The methodology has not exactly changed, but there has been an adjustment. When this happened, somebody estimated the number of crabs in areas that we did not survey. It was the best estimate to be comparable with the present. So it did not change the quality of the survey from 1999 until now.