I'll start with your last question first. On the overall TAC—I just double-checked the numbers again—there was a 6% overrun, but the overall TAC is still based on 70% of the herd, so there is some fluidity allowing us to change there. The herd that's left has to be 70% larger...am I correct in that?
I was close.
The TAC is actually set by what's called objective-based fisheries management. It's used to manage the harp seal hunt and it's designed to ensure that there's an 80% probability that the harp seal population will not fall below 70% of the maximum observed population. We can give you that in writing as well. That's the way it is set up.
The ice retraction is more of a difficulty for the sealers than it is for the seals. The seals will simply whelp on the islands and on the beaches and on land if the ice is not available. Certainly that has happened in Nova Scotia. The ice generally doesn't come in to the southwestern area of Nova Scotia, where I'm from, but it does come in as far as the Cape Breton Highlands, the northern part of Cape Breton Island. The last few years it has not been there, so we've seen, on all of what we call the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, seals whelping on the islands and on the beaches.
This year there was a bad storm in the middle of whelping season, and most of the pups were drowned because they got washed off the beaches. The NGOs actually wanted Natural Resources to go and pick these seals up and somehow bring them back and have a major human interference in the birthing grounds. It really wasn't a practical answer to something that was happening.
The markets are many-faceted. There is certainly a big market in skins, and it's a sustainable, biodegradable product. It's a good product: it's very tough; it's a very beautiful product. There's that market. A lot of those skins are processed in Europe and then sent on to Asian markets. There's a huge market in Asia for seals.
There's a market for the omega-3 oil. There's a lot of it sold in North America, and certainly in Canada. I suggest you all buy a bottle before you go home. It's an excellent product and it's good for your health.
There is some market in northern Europe, certainly in Norway and Russia, but I'm not the expert on the marketing. There is a large market and it's a growing market.