Thanks.
My main concern is the seal issue. I think what I'm seeing here is kind of an orgy of political correctness and an unwillingness to.... That's not just to our visitors and guests; it's fairly ubiquitous.
It seems to me that's the elephant in the room, and I didn't mean the elephant seal in the room. I'm going to quote a study that was done in British Columbia by Peter Olesiuk.
He talked about the Puntledge River on Vancouver Island, where three dozen seals—that's 36 seals—killed 10,000 adult chum salmon in the fall spawning run. He was quoted as saying, “They take 60 to 70 chum fry per minute, per seal.”
Twenty or 25 years ago, the harbour seal population off the west coast was some 10,000 individuals when there was an active cull going on. Now it's at 105,000. As a biologist myself, I know we always want to say we need more data and we need more information, but at some point, given how critical the status of the chinook salmon is in some of the salmon runs and given some of the southern killer whale populations, this at least needs to be tried. I'm a big fan of adaptive management. You try something, and if it doesn't work, chances are the situation will revert to the original condition.
The seals have exploded both on the east coast and the west coast to levels we've never seen before. It's not just a coincidence that the Atlantic salmon haven't recovered and the cod haven't recovered, and now we're seeing these issues on the west coast.
Mr. Bain, I'd like you to comment on the seal issue and why we're not tackling it head-on.