As I mentioned in my opening remarks, there's more than one way to conserve this stock. We have a stock that we take advantage of in terms of the biological difference between males and females, and we target the fishery on the mature males only. So there's an additional safety net there in terms of conservation.
We do take the science advice very seriously, obviously, and that's always been the foundation of decisions, but there are other considerations in terms of the economics, the advice of fishers.
Last year, fishers came to the department with a very significant presentation that indicated that they had doubts, and they presented that and that was under consideration as well. It was part of the issue, and if they wished to do that and take the consequence of the outcome, that was part of the consideration as well. That was something the minister did consider and took into fact for her decision last year.
Having said that, we always know that there's a need to ensure that on the bottom of the abundance you take care of the stock first, and that's what's been happening this year. Last year's decision, the year before, etc.--those decisions were taken with full knowledge of the fact that we were in the downward trend in the cycle and that there would be a trough that we'd have to manage through and deal with. That was done this year, with the difficult decision to put the fish first and to ensure that we made the trough as short as possible, in terms of how long we have to live with this kind of TAC, and to set rebuilding as the priority and do that as quickly as possible.