They've clearly told us that if we don't have that money, there will be no stock assessment, there will be no reports, there will be no updating of the stock assessment model, and it will lead to a decrease in quotas.
So there is no way for an industry that has contributed millions over the last ten years for management and stock assessment—unless I went back to my members and said, “By the way, boys, everybody has to buck up”, even though 40 of them didn't even go fishing because the market has been destroyed by an IUU fishery, which is a global problem.
It just goes to show you how you can do everything right. Our industry has been recognized as one of the most sustainable urchin fisheries in the world. We've worked hard to maximize the economic value of that fishery. But you run into a problem in the market and all of a sudden you're left not being able to sustainably manage either from the conservation or economic point of view.
So really there is no method for us to gain that money back. And I think it is really unfortunate in our case that we've been involved in this co-management program for years and contributed millions of dollars. Now when we're in trouble, the government has basically told us, tough luck.
You've contributed millions for years, and every year, by the way, the department has asked for more and more money. It's not just what you agreed to when you first set up your fishery. It's every year there's an incremental increase, funding biologists, funding someone to follow us around where we go fishing every day. It's $600,000 a year out of a fishery, $5,500 a licence.
That's the red sea urchin fishery, but if you look at the geoduck fishery, we pay $50,000 a year for our licence to go fishing, to manage. We have three biologists, for example, who are on the payroll, who we pay for. This year, in spite of the fact that our industry was paying for them, they had to take them away from our industry and give them to the herring people because there were no resources for the herring people. So one fishery is paying for the biologists but then they have to go to herring fishery because there's no money to pay for them.