They'll give us an indication of their overall health. As my colleague mentioned, they'll allow us to see if there are any viral loads that might originate from places like open-net pen aquaculture farms. Do they have a nutritional deficiency? We know the gulf is changing. Is there a marked decline in food availability for smolts? They spend several weeks in the gulf before migrating to the Strait of Belle Isle.
The goal is to study the entire process over several years, not just this year. We need to build up time series data, year after year, to better understand when there is a significant decline, as was the case in 2023–24. We need to be able to pinpoint an event and say that some particular thing happened in that particular year.