I'll just finish what John was saying by pointing out that the study that has not been translated yet and has just been submitted is called “Allocation within Commercial Fisheries in Canada” and is on Pacific herring, salmon, and groundfish. This paper, prepared and presented by Gordon Gislason, goes into great detail and explains very clearly sockeye equivalents. When you get that paper, if you were to read it, you'd have a very good explanation of what John is talking about regarding sockeye equivalents, which is quite technical to get into here.
Concerning Cultus Lake, there is a run coming back this year on the Fraser River. There are 18 million sockeye coming back. This is a huge number of fish and this is a run that in the past we would have made a lot of money from, but this year we have a situation with the Cultus Lake stocks. Cultus Lake is a lake very close to Vancouver. It's just a little way up the river and there are a lot of problems in that lake. The sockeye that go in there are in big trouble. Last year we were not allowed to fish at all because of concerns with that run and the timing and the way they came in.
We are allowed to take a certain amount of that run--a certain percentage--as what we call “morts”. To be able to catch any amount of that fish, we think we need to have an allocation of morts on that stock of 40%. This seems like a high number, but we've planned amelioration on that lake. We have a proposal to look after some of the problems, to spend money looking after.... This is a first for fishermen, to tax themselves to do the work to ameliorate the problems in the lake. We have consulted scientists and we have reports that tell us that our work on that lake will be of more benefit to bringing the stock back than cutting back the commercial fishery to a lower rate of harvest, and that it should be able to sustain a 40% harvest rate.
The problem on the lake is that milfoil has been introduced. And the milfoil has created a situation where the pikeminnow, which is a predator of the small salmon, is able to hide in the milfoil and attack the small salmon as they're hatching and going out of the lake. It's a major problem.
The problem isn't so much with the commercial fishing; the problem is in the lake, and this proposal will do much.... If we were to stop the commercial fishing of this stock without looking after the problems in the lake--maybe I'm going on a bit long here--that run would become extinct. We have to look after the problems in the lake.
Go ahead, John.