One of the things that strike me as odd here--and I think I got a bit of an answer for a question I had in mind--is why are we catching lobsters in April and May that we're selling in November? Why aren't we catching them in November, ready for market? Is it the migration of the stock? I heard you say, Mr. Withers, that they're here for only a certain amount of time.
It doesn't make any sense to me that a company would go through the expense of storing a lobster that they have no intention of selling or know they can't sell for five or six months down the road. You have the moult; lobsters moult once a year. I'm sure the timing is different throughout the region, but if DFO knows when that is, why are we doing a rush for the fish in a few weeks, putting a glut on the market for the most part, storing these lobsters and paying incredible costs to chill water down to two degrees? I don't know what the carbon footprint is on that, but it just doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
It's one thing for a farmer to stick his wheat in a bin. It will keep for years. But to get a product like this fresh to the market, why are you catching so much of it so far away from when you're going to market it?