I can give you a quick one on the herring that we just went through. We have an extensive herring program. In the past, we went out for the whole month of March and did charter systems, where you test the fish, put it in and it goes back to the biological station for overall stock assessment.
What happened this year was that at the beginning of February, we were finally given what I'd call a donation of about $300,000 to do a condensed version. They called it the roe quality test program, but instead of doing it for the whole month, we got about 12 or 14 days out of it. It wasn't enough to give us the reality of what was in the water for that month. It was condensed right down.
Christina said $900,000. A lot of that went to DFO personnel, who sort of took over from our herring conservation to take the dive surveys that were done only on a sporadic basis. They weren't fulfilling the whole science that we have.
When it comes to herring next year, we're going to have a smaller TAC, since we didn't fulfill our need for science because of the late timing of getting approval for the costs of our charter program.
When it comes to salmon, we have charter programs that are out in the ocean and work their way back. They give us information on a steady basis about how the fish are showing up in the grounds prior to getting to the spawning grounds. Without that, we would have no way of knowing how many fish are coming, what the diversion rates are, or any way to set up a proper business plan regarding how to catch fish.
Without those systems in place, you are going to struggle until the fish get to the spawning grounds. That's not going to be a very good thing if there are too many of them there. We need that forward-looking science.