First of all, there's the minister's discretionary authority. In our view, it's now being used in all kinds of ways. At first, the focus was resource preservation. We see how the current situation is, but we knew that the biomass would be very low this year. As a result of the decisions made, there was more pressure, more fishing for this resource. So one may well wonder what the logic is in this kind of management.
At one time, around 1996, there was co-management in our fishery. That worked well for a while. Then we realized there was no umpire. The party that had the power was therefore free to comply or not to comply with the agreement, which resulted in a lot of frustration. It also resulted in a loss of trust in the science, even though all efforts were made to be honest with the fishermen.
I think the fishermen themselves have to be more involved. There should be neutral committees to hear the complaints of fishermen, scientists and managers. There should also be management umpires along the way to determine whether the interests of all parties are being met.