What happens is that generally the fishermen in LFA 34 are day fishermen. You go out and you come back, but you keep your lobsters in water. Most of the time you keep them in circulating water. You bring them in and put them in what we call lobster cars, or holding facilities. You put them in crates or cages, or you'll put them in a tubing system, where there's a little window or a little slot for each lobster to go in. The quality that you put in is the quality that generally you take out.
How long can you hold them? You can hold them in the tubing system and maintain their quality from December until March, because what happens generally is that the water cools down, the temperature goes down, and the lobster becomes dormant. It doesn't go to sleep, but it is not active; it's almost like hibernation. So they will be maintained in good quality. I eat them; they're perfectly good.
In the springtime of the year, the challenge comes when the water temperature goes up. So what you do is you have a large tank, just as you're going to see today, the holding facility. It's like a huge swimming pool. It has circulators, air, and water. It also has temperature control. It brings the water temperature down to about 32 to 36 degrees and holds that lobster. I personally have held lobster from the second week of May until November, and they're just as tasty in November as they were in May.
Does that answer your question?