From the producers' point of view, with the restrictions on access to processors and buyers, the competition has been strongly reduced and they have no place else to go. For the first time, people are not buying fish for a day or two, and boat quotas are being put on arbitrarily. This sort of thing has never been heard of before. There is an argument among the harvesters that the so-called Ocean Choice agreement signed between the company and the provincial government in Prince Edward Island should be broken to lift the moratorium on processing licences. In fact, I think I saw in this morning's Charlottetown Guardian newspaper that last year someone had been fined $10,000 for processing lobster illegally in a plant that's fully prepared to process.
On May 14th, 2009. See this statement in context.