Around the coast of Newfoundland, usually you're somewhere where you can get to a coast guard radio, but there are places in Newfoundland and Labrador where you wouldn't be able to hail in because your VHF radio or some other means.... There are going to be isolated cases where you won't be able to hail in because there's no cell coverage and no VHF coverage, or you mightn't have a big set on your boat. There are going to be times when you're not going to be able to hail in, but generally, you'll pass the information along to a second party who'll be able to hail in.
The other thing is that probably what you got from St. Anthony is the same thing we've been talking about here today. It is that we have to hail in and then we have to remove the seals from our boat. DFO doesn't have anybody counting seals on weekends. We have to wait from Saturday to Monday or Tuesday for them to count the seals that have been killed. That means we're out beating around in the ice. I have a 34' 11'' boat--she's not called the Comfort Inn--with five people on it out there for two weeks or three weeks. I'll tell you that, now.
I'm saying that the excuse by DFO last year was to slow down the hunt, but you must realize that seals, when they're going north, they go at 25 miles a day, usually 25 miles in a 24-hour period. Like Mr. Brown was saying, you stop that for four days, they've gone 100 miles. That's 100 miles you have to steam to get to those seals again. Our season should be open earlier. It should be open around April 8, because the seals are in the water. Once they get in the water, you have a very, very hard job to kill them, to get them, a very, very hard job.
Premier Williams said to ban the hakapik. There was no consultation with sealers before he made the statement. Mr. Williams is not a sealer, that's the bottom line. I don't tell a farmer how to grow something, because I don't know how to grow a stinging nettle. Do you know what I mean? A lot of things have been said about the seal industry by people who don't understand the industry.