Thanks, Mr. Calkins. That's a broad question, so I'm going to do my best to answer it as quickly as possible.
First and foremost, European green crab are recognized as one of the world's most deadly invasive species. They're ecosystem engineers. They have proven their ability to absolutely reconstruct nearshore ecosystems, as evidenced by what has occurred in the Atlantic regions of this country, where green crabs established themselves decades sooner than they did out here in the Pacific region. They not only target very critical juvenile wild salmon habitat in eelgrass beds but there's also empirical evidence of their getting up into the rivers and cleaning up salmon redds to prey on the eggs as well.
As I mentioned earlier in my first question and answer, they have also been identified on several occasions preying upon wild juvenile salmon as they're leaving their natal rivers and spending time rearing in that eelgrass habitat as well.
So it's very important that we understand more about how they are affecting wild Pacific salmon here in our region.
In terms of what more we can do, I think there's been a concerted effort by DFO aquatic invasive species and the DFO science areas, coastal first nations, and ENGOs like ours to truly understand how best to move forward and tackle the green crab issue.
There are many unknowns that require concerted scientific study, but in reality what we need to do to boil it down to its simplest point is to get as many green crabs out of the water as quickly as possible. We have to do that taking a cautionary approach because we have to understand the best methods for industrial targeted trapping, and I think some of the progress we've made over the last year and a half in understanding how best to proceed is going to be utilized very quickly.
I would just like to end on the point that while we would like to see traps going into the water as quickly as possible, we do acknowledge that there have been significant delays, likely caused by the fact that Canada and the rest of the world have been in a global pandemic and, obviously, keeping our citizens safe has taken precedence over and above anything else, but we are seeing significant progress and hopefully we'll have some good news in the coming weeks or months about getting traps into the water as quickly as possible.
Thank you.