We do have accountability at this point, but it is a relatively new program. The fact that Canada is the first one in the world to share lost gear reporting suggests that it's a developing program, and in fact we are ahead of the game.
When it comes to the reporting of lost gear, our harvesters are focused, obviously, on not losing their gear, but the reporting tool itself is relatively new, so those numbers have been increasing annually. There are incentives for harvesters to report lost fishing gear. A perfect example is market bodies like Seafood Watch and the Marine Stewardship Council. They are watching very closely what our harvesters do and taking note of lost gear reports and the impact on their bottom line, on their ability to sell their product.
The other incentives are, for example, that our fishing gear for lobster and crab is marked, so if we lose the fishing gear and someone comes across, say, an entangled whale, that gear is marked based on the fishery it came from. We want to do that because we obviously want to take note of gear that's been lost, and harvesters know that. They know the gear has been marked. They want to contribute to the lost gear reporting system. That is in particular for lobster and crab fisheries and fixed-gear fisheries like that.
It's also marked because we want to distinguish between Canadian gear and U.S. gear. It's not uncommon for whales to be entangled and to transit both borders, so we don't want to be identified as a source of gear in Canadian waters when the entanglement may have happened elsewhere.
The marking of gear, of course, is a motivating factor as well for the industry to realize they should report the loss, and we are seeing an increase in numbers in reporting. The uptake has been relatively quick, considering the program has been in place for a very short time in the fisheries world.