Can I expand a little on that? Am I allowed? I'll put on my fish manager hat for groundfish.
Yes, we've been in a moratorium since 1992. We have a very small halibut fishery and a very small pollock fishery. That's all we have now in 4W, our designated NAFO area. Yes, we helped to diminish the stock, and yes, there were a lot of bad decisions, but we've stopped fishing and it's going down, down, down. The natural mortality is terrible. It's never going to come back. I'm not going to hold my breath for it.
What's even worse is that in 4X they're going down the same road we are. They were just told that their quota of cod is going to be almost half of what they had the year before. There are so many worms in the cod that they have a problem selling them because it's too labour intensive.
You should have seen the faces around the table. I've looked at them. We already went through this. They're like, “What do you mean?” They're saying, “We can't live on a bycatch fishery, so what does this mean? You're going to shut us down?” This is Southwest Nova that we're talking about, where they actually do have a fishery, but they're on the verge. I've been watching over the years and they're on the verge of going into a moratorium the same as we did. They're getting more and more haddock, but they can't catch the haddock because of the cod.
Again, they blame it on the seals. We already have the evidence and have already lived through it. We know it's the seals. Now we have another area that's going to be closed, in my opinion, because of the seals.