Mr. Wilson, I want to commend you for your advocacy for recreational fishing in general. It's something that I think DFO always has on the back burner. I think the recreational angler in Canada should be demanding more effort from DFO—not asking for it, but demanding that more of its resources be spent on the recreational fishery.
Having said that, I kind of dispute your 2% figure here. I want to quote from the Atlantic Salmon Federation and DFO's study in 2018—just last year—in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. It showed that up to 18% of smolt leaving the Northwest Miramichi were eaten by striped bass in some years.
I know this study fairly well. It was a peer-reviewed and well-done study. I don't dispute your 2% number, but having talked about a stomach analysis of angler catch versus a detailed study like these folks did, I think it is kind of important.
In my view, Atlantic salmon conservation is probably one of the most difficult conservation challenges in the world. It's not a wonder that we have so few; it's a wonder that we have so many, given the challenges that the Atlantic salmon face.
You spoke about the value of the sport fishery. You said it was $3.8 million in the Striper Cup fishery. Well, the Gardner Pinfold study that ASF did was $135 million for the Atlantic salmon.
I have a bit of a different point of view than you do of human management of resources. I think that humans have the right to ask for a certain mix of fishery and then manage towards that. That's a bit of a soliloquy there.
How do we keep the striped bass at the numbers you want—350,000—given the natural fluctuations of both the food supply and temperature that you so eloquently described?