Thank you for the opportunity to comment more.
Pricing is a complicated issue. I think what you've got to start from is understanding that buyers generally pay for value offered. One of the reasons the fishery is so complicated is that there is no single price for crab. In the marketplace an eight-up or ten-up section will get 40¢ to 50¢ more than a five to eight section. In the marketplace a four-ounce section is heavily discounted, sometimes for a dollar less than what you're getting for a five to eight section. Yet when a boat is landing a load of live crab, that crab is a mixture of all of these different sizes. So in any given time the buyer is trying to judge what is in that mixture that he's buying and how is it going to translate economically.
There is this idea that competition among buyers raises the value of crab. I think there is something to be said for that, but there's also a caution. In the lobster industry, and particularly in the Maritimes, there's been a system of dock buyers, and it's very easy to get a lobster licence to show up on a wharf and start buying lobster. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and P.E.I. have all taken steps to start restricting the activities of those unrestricted, unlicensed buyers because the feeling was they destabilize the industry. The way they destabilize the industry is that it's very easy for a guy with no investment--for example, a guy in the Maritimes who's short on product, who has orders from Japan, this year, and has had his quotas cut in the gulf--to go out and increase his crab. So for him it makes economic sense to go and say, okay, I can pay whatever I need to pay, whether it's $1.90 or $2, because I'm filling in for my order.
But that's not going to be a long-term viable system, because the next year when he has his orders, he's not going to do that. So what it ends up doing--at least this is what they found in the lobster industry--is it depresses the ability of the industry as a whole to market and get the highest value for the product.
I've always been a believer that maximizing the total revenue for all sides of the industry, harvesters and processors, is the best long-term approach. I just think that when looking at pricing it's important to look at what's the value being offered in a particular area. Area 19 does have an extremely good product, and an extremely high reputation, and for that reason they get more money for their crab. It's an excellent product.