When we have a fish species in decline, it is usually a combination of habitat issues, overfishing and broader habitat issues, such as land use and climate change. All of those need to be addressed.
My expertise is not in commercial fisheries management, so it's difficult to say to what extent there's overfishing occurring internationally versus in Canada. There are also challenges with mixed-stock fisheries being overharvested. Certain parts of that population are healthy, and other parts are endangered. If you're harvesting them together, you may be overharvesting the endangered parts.
We have a real challenge in the fact that commercially listed endangered species that should be considered by the DFO and recommended for listing under the Species at Risk Act are not. I work a lot on American eel, and that species has now been waiting 12 years for the DFO's decision as to whether or not it should be listed so that we can get on with either protecting it as a listed species or managing it outside of that. I do think that more quickly addressing endangered species under the Species at Risk Act when they are commercially harvested would help us to decide how to manage limited harvest of those species.