I don't know about a cycle. Perhaps I could just comment briefly on some of the things that are happening in the management of our resource here.
I read an extremely patronizing, offensive column in The Globe and Mail last week from Jeffrey Simpson. It effectively told us that we were too stupid to understand that if you don't manage a resource, you won't have it around for the long term. Apart from the fact that he did a tremendous amount of revisionist history, he didn't even bother to inform himself on some of the things that are happening currently.
In our crab fishery we've been concerned for some years about the degree of dependence on a multi-species autotrawl survey as the vehicle for determining crab abundance, for the simple reason that's not a type of gear you fish crab with. It certainly was better than having nothing, and I'd say it probably served us reasonably well for a period of time, but we ran into a scare on the resource in the year 2000.
We really felt we needed to have something more than that survey to base critical decisions on, to give the scientists more to work with, so we started, our organization, to work with DFO on a post-season crab pot survey. We use the traps that are used to catch the fish. We use crab fishermen to use them. There are about 100 enterprises per year that participate in a survey designed in conjunction with DFO scientists to try to measure, after the fishery's over, how much crab is left as a starting point for next year. I think that's been an important factor.
We've had pretty stable quotas. There are some fleets, including the one that Lyndon participates in, that got a nasty jolt in terms of the quotas this year—certainly nothing in the order of 63% but painful nonetheless. But overall, I think over the years we've been successful in having pretty stable fisheries, although I think everyone would do well to heed the warnings that were made earlier about the impact of the runaway seal herd. It has a huge potential impact.