I think it's about reconciling the difference, because being out by a kilo a day is an astronomical amount of biomass removed from the environment. The Norwegian number is based on the caloric requirements for harp seal in the wild, which do swim some 15,000 kilometres each per year. We have that data from DFO. We've seen that they go up to the eastern coast of Greenland and back. We know that harp seals now are showing up in rivers and eating char in places where they never were before.
Like any problem we have in our lifetime, the first thing you need to do is define it, and we haven't defined the problem. We have pockets of science here, and I think one thing we could all agree on is that immediately a gap analysis be conducted of what we do know, what the strength of that data is and what we do not know.
Invite dialogue with other countries that are challenged with the same problem that we are. An abundance of pinnipeds and impacts on fisheries is not solely a Canadian problem. This has been experienced through everywhere pinnipeds exist, and I think until we desensitize the topic, we won't get to even being able to scrape at the question that you're asking because what people in the environment are seeing.... Certainly I don't spend the majority of my time out there, but I talk to people every day who are out there. They're seeing a lot of crab being eaten and a lot of shrimp being eaten, which doesn't really provide a lot of benefit to harp seals in its consumption. Dr. George Rose would have said it's the equivalent of eating popcorn. Why are they eating so much shrimp?
Again, I'd like to come back to the situation in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, where we know the grey seal is going to extinct four species and we are not responding. This is my fourth committee now that I've sat through and we have seen recommendations that have not been implemented.