Yes. That's a very interesting story. Since really the late 1970s, the harvesting of groundfish on both sides of the border has taken its toll on both the abundance and size structure of groundfish. By “groundfish” I am referring to an assemblage of several species, more than a dozen or so, including the big ones—cod, haddock, halibut, a number of other flatfish and so forth. They have largely been depleted.
As I am sure you are aware, there are now moratoria on the harvesting of many of those species, especially cod. Well, they're chief predators of lobster, so the removal of those species, especially the large individuals in those populations, has essentially relaxed the predation pressure on lobster. That essentially relaxed the predation pressure and enabled them to exploit habitats they had never exploited before, because it had been essentially too risky to do so. That has certainly played an important part in the surge in abundance and the northward shift of the centre of the population.