I'm so pleased to hear from the fish harvesters who work with us, who do the experimentation, and especially the ones who benefited from the lending program this year. In their words, they talk about how access to this equipment saved their fishery, with 375,000 pounds of snow crab fished out of a closed area, because otherwise they would have had to steam many hours away to fish. At the same time, we also eliminated 500 buoy lines from the area, which is a great conservation success and allowed the fishery to continue.
The fishermen provide some really clear evidence and plain statements about the value of these kinds of programs. Organizations like mine, as well as those of Dr. Morissette and Dr. Brown, are looking at the benefits we are bringing to the whales in terms of prevention. That is also something that's really important, but the real value is this intersection between the fisheries and conservation value. The fish harvesters are a powerful voice in explaining what that is.