On advice on catch methods, occasionally we at the Scientific Council are asked to provide information on certain catch methods. Usually the questions pertain more to mesh size, or maybe to bottom fishing versus mid-water fishing; I'm thinking of redfish now.
I remember many years ago looking at questions on longlining for Greenland halibut, for example, so yes, it does happen. It's not a common occurrence, but we are asked occasionally to provide information on fishing gear and catch methods.
A more recent example would be that of providing information on ways to reduce cod bycatch through gear technology. We've provided some recent information. In fact, there is a standing request from the Fisheries Commission to the Scientific Council to provide additional materials on ways that bycatch might be reduced. I think this perhaps would fall within that general type of advice. We've also provided advice on the use of what's called the Nordmore grate to exclude groundfish bycatch from shrimp trawls. I think there are probably a number of things within that category.
I think your last question was on whether dragging is the worst form of fishing. That's not a question we've considered. I suppose there's a potential for fishing gears of any sort to do harm on certain types of habitat if not used properly, but we haven't evaluated or considered the impacts of dragging versus longlining versus gillnetting. Certainly there would be features with all of those gears that would have to be monitored closely depending on how they were used, what types of fish they were directed at, what types of bottom they were used on, and so on.
With regard to your question on the precautionary approach and 3M cod biomass, simply taking the lowest number all the time is not really how we would view the precautionary approach. We would view the advice provided by the Scientific Council as consistent with the precautionary approach. If, for example, the range of catch options provided gave a very low risk of something negative happening to the stock, such as dropping below a certain level of biomass or not increasing fast enough, under a range of options we would consider the precautionary approach under all of those features.