That's been in place for a long time. I think DFO has made that a little more flexible. Again, I have never seen that happen in our area. Last spring, I understand, in New Brunswick area 25, there had been some people who buddied up like that and reduced 150 traps, but I haven't seen that happen in our area yet.
The catches in area 24 were over $12 million last year. It was a pretty good average; the price was low. We got through last year, but any time catches drop or if the price goes down any more, we're going to be at a break-even basis again. You say in our area, and that's what we're speaking on for you here today. We didn't see that last year, but it could be helpful down the road.
You're going to start putting kids out of work, at the back of the boats and stuff like that. It's a problem, but I don't think that's really the way to do it. I think rationalization in the fishery would be a better way to go. We have a lot of older fishermen going out. As Francis pointed out, there's not enough of the younger generation coming into the fishery.
I'm 46 years old. I have two sons. Both of them made it quite clear, “Dad, do whatever you want with it because we're not going fishing”, so neither one of them wants to. I have one boy who's real good in the boat, who fishes with me some. I don't like pushing kids into anything, but he could change at some point. As of now, both of them told me, “If you want to get out of it, you do whatever you want to do; you do it. We're not going fishing.” That's the attitude of a lot of kids today. They don't want to go out in the back of a boat. They don't want to be dealing with this kind of stuff. That's the way the world turns today.