Sure. In a nutshell, I guess there were three prongs to it.
One is that back in the day in the lobster industry in the southern gulf, there were too many participants in the lobster fishery for the amount of lobster available, so there was a need to reduce the number of active participants. In our case, in New Brunswick, for instance, about 20% of our fishermen were bought out and retired. That also had a role to play in the effort on the actual lobster stock; it helped it repopulate.
At the same time, part of the program looked at what else we can do in terms of conservation measures to increase the reproduction of lobsters and in that way increase the numbers of adult lobsters that could then be available for the fishery. For instance, we looked at the minimum size for lobster, which back in the day was around 72 millimetres—68 millimetres, actually, before 2000—so you only had about 15% of lobsters that could reproduce at least once before being fished. Now we're up to about 85%, which is a huge increase in reproduction.
On the last thing, there was some extra money put in to work on different types of research projects to try to get a better understanding of the lobster fishery, but also as a species and the interactions with other ecosystem participants, other species.
All in all, it was a successful program. As the data today shows, our lobster industry in the southern gulf is a success. This has been the case for the past five or six years, in large part because of this program.