Well, I'll age myself by telling you that I am 60 years old. I grew up on the Porcupine River. I grew up fishing, so I know what it was like when I was a child. We saw an abundance of salmon compared to where we are now. As the minister responsible for that back in the day, and then as a chair of the Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee, putting restrictions on my people was probably one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do.
With regard to the number of fish we've seen historically, as the story goes—Tim just described it—they're the biggest fish in the Pacific stocks, and in the stocks the numbers are so small. The fish are returning smaller. We're seeing three- to four-year-olds. That's unusual. A fish doesn't leave its spawning ground, go off to the ocean and come back three years later. Historically we've seen them returning at seven and eight years old, which tells us a lot about the changing environments. There's no explanation. No one can explain that to us.
With regard to numbers, we fly in fish, unfortunately. Last year was the first time in our history we actually had to buy fish out of B.C. and fly them into our community so we can keep the culture alive. That's what we've done, and it's unfortunate, but we want to keep the salmon culture alive and keep educating our young people about the importance of preserving wild stocks and the genetics.