I do, actually. We have a lot of concerns on P.E.I. about the carrying capacity of the species. Basically, there's a lot of talk about productivity and where things are right now in terms of our biomass. Right now our biomass is through the roof, which is great; this is not a complaint. The concern that we have is that there's also a commercial fishery for rock crab, and one of the main diets of lobster outside of the fishing season is rock crab. Our question is whether there is enough in terms of habitat and natural diet for the lobsters to sustain the population that we have out there.
It's one of the questions that we've been taking to DFO Moncton. P.E.I is in a bit of a different scenario from, say, Newfoundland and southwest Nova Scotia in the sense that we're more of a self-contained unit within the gulf. Our larvae stay within there; they drift around, of course, with the currents. We have a really close collaboration with DFO. We did put forward—and DFO is on board—this research in trying to understand the carrying capacity and making sure that there are enough resources available for the lobster themselves in our area. Unfortunately, when we requested funding through DFO in collaboration on a rock crab study to make sure there was enough nutrition out there for them, it was denied.
It was really disheartening to P.E.I. to know that something that seems to be so important to us—ensuring that our lobster population is sustainable—was denied funding. That would be another main source of research we would like to do, ensuring there's enough food out there for such a large population.