Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the officials, Monsieur Serge Doucet and Doug Bliss, for being here with us today.
This study of striped bass is something that I wanted to get in, because I live on the Miramichi and I have been talking to the people, the stakeholders. I've been to several meetings. We're going to have a chance to question some of the stakeholders after this second hour.
One of the questions I'm always asking, which people are sometimes confused about, is how the science is applied and how the numbers come about. Before the explosion of the population, for instance, one of the major questions.... We never closed the river for the spawning season, and now we are in this...over a million spawners, and we decided to close the river. Those things are not very consistent with science.
Can you explain that? Do you have a reference number for when you start doing things to manage the population?
Either of you can answer, Serge or Doug.