Thank you.
Thank you, guys, for appearing before us today.
Obviously we've heard much today about the size of the female lobster and how important it is. My question is with regard to V-notching, and the practice of that.
I find that there's always this great debate between DFO scientists and the fishermen, and sometimes we don't use the fishermen as the greatest scientists we have. In speaking to some fishermen in my riding, and from a group of fishermen in one bay who practised V-notching, they swear by it. And then you go to the next bay, and they're not practising V-notching. And for the ones who are practising V-notching, keeping the bigger females there to spawn more eggs, it's phenomenal
Why aren't we doing more? Why don't we protect those animals that have been V-notched, make them illegal to sell? How widespread is the practice of V-notching? Is there any research there that could give us some more information, saying this is a good way of keeping the females spawning?