Right now, in the southern gulf, we have an acoustic index. We have a catch rate series, meaning catch per unit effort, and we have some gillnet information. By and large, from a science perspective, we have a fairly robust picture of current status.
Trends are a little more difficult to work on, particularly projections into the future. There is a pilot study that is being started in the southern gulf, looking at expanding and integrating some of our other acoustic surveys. That's a new piece that we're rolling out. It's very new, so it'll take a few years for enough information to come to us through that survey to allow us to add it into the science advice we provide.
We are also looking at standardizing how we undertake our acoustic surveys throughout the gulf and the Scotian Shelf, actually, with the idea of using the same techniques throughout. The way it works now is that a lot of our acoustic surveys, particularly for herring, are done in collaboration with industry groups, so they're done from industry vessels. They basically collect the information for us. We standardize the gear and all that. We standardize information and then we work it out, but a lot of the work is done in direct collaboration with industry. We're looking at ways to sort of standardize how we undertake that.
However, I would want to circle back and say that we are fairly confident in our understanding of the stock in the southern gulf.