In my view, the best way the government can support a changing environment and its effect on fisheries is to support fishery science at a large scale within the department, but also at a smaller scale in industry-led science and partnerships that lobster and other harvesters are involved in all across the Atlantic provinces.
I'm actually the president of the Southwest Lobster Science Society. A lot of our members and a lot of fishermen in southwest Nova Scotia are very focused on lobster science, but we find that funding for that can be very hard to come by. We'd love to be able to collaborate with our international partners. Just this past fall, we weren't able to attend what is the pre-eminent lobster management science convention in the world, because the department refused to fund it.
A focus on science and a better understanding of fishery resources and how they're changing is how the government should be helping the industry directly.