We're often asked that, and the fishermen do express concern about that. I think the answer is that changing ocean climate conditions are really driving the change. We do see cod preying on shrimp and they do prey to some extent on crab. The mortality they cause just from predation by cod is not enough to cause the declines we're seeing. There's mortality from other sources and there's poor recruitment, particularly in the crab resource. It's not producing the offspring that it should be to sustain itself at a high level. I don't think we can simply point a finger and say cod are eating them all and that's why they're going down, because it's just not that simple. Ecosystems are much more complex. There are a variety of things going on here at one time, and it's a bit too simplistic to consider cod to be the sole cause.
On September 21st, 2016. See this statement in context.