Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for helping us to understand this issue a little better.
I just want to make sure I actually understand the problem. We need to get to solutions as well, but we first need to understand the problem, so let me try to put it in the simplest terms that I can.
Say I'm a lobster fisherman; I catch and sell lobsters. There are certain input costs that I have in order to do these things. If I'm one of those lobster fishermen who's in difficulty, which is the purpose of this study, or if I'm having trouble making money, then I assume there's one of a few things at play. Maybe I'm not catching enough lobsters, either because there are fewer lobsters to catch, which is a stock issue, or because there are more people fishing. The problem could also be market pressures: prices are too low for me to make a living.
I'm wondering whether we can generalize from these 40 or so LFAs. It seems that the lobster fishery is not homogeneous by any means. For example, the FRCC report says that the gross revenues from 2004 ranged from $245,000 in LFA 34 to $45,000 in LFA 20 and LFA 25. That's quite a big difference. Yet if you look at the chart that they provide in their report of landings of lobster by LFA, LFA 25, which had gross revenues of only $45,000 on average, was actually one of the higher areas in the number of lobsters landed. I'm not sure what's going on, but I assume there are too many fishermen in that area.
Can you comment on this to help us understand the problem?