Fisheries committee  Thank you for the opportunity.

Fisheries committee  There are several components to that to unpack. The first one is that in a lot of LFAs, we are dependent on fishery-dependent data, which comes in the form of logbooks and landing slips. That's the information we get to work with in science. We do have, in several other areas, fishery-independent data collection that we can either compare with that fishery-dependent data or tune it, if you will.

Fisheries committee  First, to make a small correction, DFO science provides advice on levels of harvest. We don't set a harvest level within a precautionary approach framework. We do recommend on levels relative to risk. On the second part, I'm not entirely sure where exactly that policy level sits within the department.

Fisheries committee  I can speak for DFO science in general around that. Our role is to provide advice for resource management and provide advice on particular questions that we're tasked with addressing. Usually those answers are couched in the language of sustainability and risk, in terms of risk to the resource.

Fisheries committee  Our role within DFO science is to provide advice on the sustainable use of harvestable resources. We also provide advice on a number of other types of issues or items that relate to fisheries science and ocean science. A lot of our role in terms of the provision of advice is response.

Fisheries committee  Generally speaking, this is a core component of fisheries science. It's not just lobster; it crosses all the taxa for which we provide advice. Uncertainty and the explicit expression of uncertainty in our level of confidence, in our knowledge of, say, abundance and trends within a population, is a core piece of information that has to be communicated to resource managers and resource users and the public.

Fisheries committee  To my knowledge, sir, at this point we have not received any specific direction. We have provided advice on some queries that came through the media, but other than that, we are still undertaking our usual monitoring and provision of advice for lobster. Matthew, I don't know if you have a different experience.

Fisheries committee  I'm not familiar with co-management. Speaking again as a member of science sector, we certainly have ongoing monitoring programs that are collaborative in nature...I think in just about every one of our Atlantic regions. It covers a variety of species. Those levels of collaboration are everything from where we are a minor player and the first nation or indigenous group is the main driver of that monitoring program, or, conversely, we are.

Fisheries committee  Again, I would speak to our scope, which is in science. In terms of monitoring, we would provide advice related to the overall health of the stock and trends within that population. We currently, and would in the future, look at the issue of total removals relative to a sustainability target or within a precautionary approach framework.

Fisheries committee  Again, that's directly outside our mandate and area of expertise within science, but I'd be happy to take a follow-up to that question.

Fisheries committee  Again, that's not my area of expertise within the department. As the minister said last week—

Fisheries committee  I would take a step back and look at it from a broader perspective, not identifying any particular fishery, but for overall health and sustainability of a stock, multiple fisheries of the same stock. Again, we provide advice on the overall trends within the population. How surplus yield within that population is apportioned among users is not a science question; it's a policy question.

Fisheries committee  At the moment, that area is within the core central area of lobster range. If there are negative impacts from climate change, we're not expecting those in the short term. It is factual to say that at the very southern extent of their range, due to increasing temperatures, we've seen a very sharp drop in productivity of lobster, let's say, off New England, and an increase in susceptibility to disease.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for your question. Again, I'll turn to my colleague if he has anything additional to say. In Atlantic Canada, our lobster stock assessments are indicator based. As I said earlier, we compare recent information and catch rates or landings relative to historical trends.

Fisheries committee  It's the handling of them, yes. Even animals that are, let's say, undersized or.... Well, they wouldn't be soft shelled and buried. Animals that are outside of the harvest window are handled and returned to the water. There are studies that demonstrate that for soft-shell crustaceans, post-release mortality exists.