That's what we're trying to correct now, particularly with the small boats. We're trying to bring in perhaps a vessel registration system--that's what we're looking at with the industry now--so that we can make one person responsible for reporting. Right now we have a loophole where on a small boat...it's not registered to anyone, so you can't make any one person report.
We want to close that loophole and have everyone report daily. We've set up centres where they can do that, and then we can check with the buyer receipts later. Right now we get the data too late. By the time we know what's happened, boom, we're over quota. That's our problem, and that's what's happened, particularly in the gulf. The last two years it's been a race for seals as they've become more valuable. We've gone from a fully competitive fishery there to one where we've done area allocations. We may have to do more--that's what we're going to be discussing with industry--to reduce the race so that people aren't racing out there, fast and furious, to take them.
Never before have we seen the hunting done in two or three days, and the quota fully taken, the way we have in the last two years. It's just that they're so valuable, so quick, and the circumstances, in the northern gulf particularly, have been so good for sealing, in fact phenomenally good. People who used to be frozen in ports are not frozen in any more. Everyone and his brother are sailing out there.