Thanks again for the question.
This is an issue that is long-standing in the Pacific, where you have investors holding licences and quotas and then leasing them to fish harvesters and processing companies to prosecute the fishery.
This year, in the lead-up to the season, fish harvesters will make arrangements to lease licences and lease quota based on market prices that were received last year. For instance, the prawn licences were leasing anywhere from $60,000 to $70,000 in January of this year, and for harvesters now the season has been delayed for over a month. There are huge questions about what's going to happen in the market for prawns going forward. Those harvesters are having to cover those costs already, and cover interest payments on those until the fishery happens. There is a huge impact for those harvesters.
The other side of that is on quota leases. One of the things that has happened with COVID-19 and quota leases is there is the realization that harvesters and processors can't take the full risk of market conditions. There have been, across the board, harvesters and processors who refused to lease quotas at a set dollar price and a 50-50 sharing arrangement has been the one that's been put forward. That's what's been happening.
There has been a response from some of the licence-holders and quota holders on that, trying to extend a quota as a carry-over into next year so that they don't have to use it this year and can avoid the kind of market conditions that are happening right now.