It's uncomfortable to elaborate on repercussions that harvesters face, that our harvesters, the 45 families that fish for Skipper Otto, have experienced.
The industry is very much controlled by some big companies that control a lot of quota, licences, off-load facilities, ice plants and things of this nature. Those kinds of services can be declined to harvesters. Even if they are technically independent owner-operators, they aren't necessarily operating in an independent way. I can give you an example if you'd like to hear how quota works in terms of independents.
I'll give you a very, very common example. Fishing families may have inherited some quota from their parents, for example 5,000 pounds of quota. That's not enough quota to make a living for the year, so they have to lease some additional quota from somewhere else in order to make a living for the year. They will usually go to a company that owns quota, a company that they need to lease from. The company will lease it to them under the condition that they sell back their fish, that 10,000 pounds, for example, at the price that the company sets, but they must also sell the 5,000 pounds of quota that they own to that company in order to get that additional 10,000 pounds.
This is why I say that the beneficial ownership survey might provide some misleading evidence, because many of the independent families that do own quota aren't operating in an independent way. It's really just smart business. I'm not finger-pointing at businesses that do this. They are operating legally within the framework that's been set up by the government. Naturally, the smartest business move for them in that framework would be to own the minimum amount of quota that they need to own in order to control the rest. That's what we're experiencing, and the survey won't demonstrate that.