Yes, very good.
I'll quickly go to the bycatch and then I'll deal with other factors, as you mentioned.
The astounding thing about the southern Grand Banks, and the reason it is such a good model for how things have gone wrong and how they could become better, is that it is one of the most productive areas. We have the cold Labrador current bringing nutrients from the Arctic; we have the warm gulf stream, which creates warm waters and high production. It's from there, in the southern Grand Banks, that many scientists believe recovery of cod will begin first.
Unfortunately, since 1994, when the moratorium was put in place, bycatch levels increased every single year. I just cited the worst possible year, which was 2003. That was a mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian fleets fishing on a number of species, and Canadian fleets fishing yellowtail in particular on the southern Grand Banks. So there has been a mix of Canadian and foreign fisheries implicated.
There has certainly been some strong effort by the Canadian fleet and the department to work very hard to reduce the Canadian bycatch through gear measures and so on.
Regarding the question about predators—and no doubt you're speaking of seals—there are two things here. One is, what do we do about it? One thing you'll find with any animal population that is being severely impacted is that their resiliency to withstand external environmental factors such as variability in climate change or predation goes down. A strong, healthy cod stock may in fact be more resilient to high predation numbers or high numbers of predators than a stock that has been decimated.
As to whether killing more seals would do the job, I think the evidence around the world is that predator control just has not worked and is not a good way to manage ecosystems.
It's a different question, if you're asking what we are doing about predators, from the question of a seal hunt, which is a sustainable harvest. I'm not mixing up those two issues.
Does that get at your question?