Fisheries committee  Exactly.

Fisheries committee  Because it's brand new, they don't have any impact--yet. On the integrated harvest planning committee, the one that you just referred to, there are five representatives from the spawn-on-kelp industry and ten from the sac roe industry. We would not have allowed an increase of production to this extent in a regulated fishery.

Fisheries committee  We hope so, but it's almost too late to back up. The damage has been done, and whether they can reverse it.... Generally when you give away a quota to anybody, it's very hard to...and this organization won't be able to drag it back.

Fisheries committee  The coast-wide production for 2006 would be about 500,000 pounds.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  To answer your first question, I'll give you a quick history of what spawn-on-kelp is. We start off by building an enclosure with four logs. We build an aquarium, as such, out of web. We go out to the kelp beds and we pick kelp, a certain type of kelp, and we hang it just like socks on a clothesline.

Fisheries committee  Basically, there's a total allowable catch in British Columbia. The spawn-on-kelp industry is classified as a user of the product. So we're allocated 100 tonnes of herring to use in this operation. The sac roe fishery is a fishery where they actually catch the herring, pump them aboard the boats--in other words, kill them--and send them to town for processing for the sac roe, the little piece that is sold to the Japanese.

Fisheries committee  In the spawn-on-kelp business, ideally, if it's done properly, the fish are released and they come back next year. You've actually extracted the eggs and sold them without killing the fish at all.

Fisheries committee  No. What happens is that if you have 38 licences at 16,000 pounds each, that is a certain, definite quota that's out there for the Japanese to purchase. But now what's happened is that the government has issued 342,000 pounds of quota to one Indian band on the central coast. So without getting into the benefits or the detriments to the sac roe industry, it has basically flooded the roe-on-kelp industry and increased the coast-wide allocation, because they haven't taken it out of the other industry.

Fisheries committee  Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to thank each of you for this opportunity to bring this matter to your attention and consideration. We represent the Spawn on Kelp Operators Association, a non-profit organization formed in 1995 to represent 35 of the 46 licence-holders. The spawn-on-kelp fishery, once the most profitable on the coast, has suffered a total financial collapse because of Fisheries and Oceans Canada's interpretation of the Gladstone decision.