We did polling of the licence holders. Most of them want to keep the 45-foot length restriction. They're concerned about the fact that they're not able to move the traps as fast and not able to....The more capital you put in there, the bigger the boat, the faster and farther you can go, and the more fishing pressure.
They're fishing now in a completely different pattern, hauling day and night and moving their traps in season, and doing things they never did before. That's an increase of pressure on the stock. It's an increase of pressure economically as well, because they're investing so much in their licence and gear that even with big catches they're having a hard time making ends meet. That's the kind of problem we had originally hoped to avoid.
I agree with you that with a 45-foot limit, but seeing vessels that have actually gone to more than 27 feet wide, with huge engines—700 to 800 horsepower—and lots of cost, lots of expenses, they need a lot of fish to keep that thing going. If there's any downturn in price, any upturn in expenses, or any change in abundance, there are going to be lots of problems.
That was the kind of thing we were trying to avoid with these limits, but clearly we need to look at other ways of achieving the same outcome. As an individual, if you're in a competitive fishery you will invest for your own benefit more than perhaps you would collectively want to do if you had ITQs and things like that. You wouldn't want to have the same investment there as you would if you had a chance at more fish. People behave in a way that's reasonable from their own perspective.