Clearly you're raising a number of issues that were on our minds when we asked the FRCC to take another look at lobster ten years after their first report.
We are concerned about the fact that over that ten-year period the vessels have changed substantially. The fishing patterns have gone from a person setting the gear and leaving it there and hauling it once a day to moving gear from place to place and covering much more ground, etc. So we share your concerns.
We have asked, in the gulf, for example, every LFA to come forward with a conservation plan for the next ten years. Some have come forward and they've gone to a carapace size that will allow at least half the females to reproduce once before they're subject to pressure in the fishery. We are looking at those kinds of steps. We have introduced carapace size increases after the first report, and escapement mechanisms and so on, but we have a lot more to do.
We have to work with the industry on those issues, and that's not related to the economic performance alone. An increase in carapace size does mean your individual lobsters are more valuable, but it's not just the design for economics. That's primarily focused on sustainability.
In addition to that, each LFA is going to have to face the facts as well that tracking and traceability requirements are coming in. If you want to sell into the European Union, as of January 2010 you're going to have to be able to trace the product back to at least the fishery and at least the zone, if not right to the boat.
The other thing we have to do that for is health and safety issues, and to reduce the risk to the entire industry in the event that there is a problem in one lot of lobsters. So we need to be able to track and trace the lobsters back to the area of harvest to prove that they're legally taken. That's going to take a lot of effort on the part of fishermen, but also it's going to provide more tools for our fishery officers in the future. So tracking and traceability will be important.
They're also going to be under a lot of pressure to get Marine Stewardship Council certification, and that will mean they're going to have to adjust the fisheries to achieve the necessary proof that they have a sustainable fishery.
And whether we go to more refugias, I don't know what the solutions will be. We'll look at that in the context of each LFA, but clearly the pressure has built. Those catches have gone up to record levels, or historically high levels. If you look at a 100-year timeline, they're double the average over that 100 years, and I think it's not only based on some abundance increases, it's now based on huge investments in extra pressure. We're going to have to try to manage it, and at some point we're going to have to try to find a way to get the incentives focused on net income, reducing costs, and increasing value rather than just building bigger, faster, more effective lobster-killing machines.