Fisheries committee  Yes, certainly. Thank you for the question. The big issue when we're fishing offshore, in any fishery we're involved in, is that the rope strength has to be of sufficient breaking strain that we're not going to part the rope when it's in the hauler under normal working circumstances.

Fisheries committee  No. The only conversations I've seen were when discussions were still being had here at the House. I sent the email to Mr. Small, got the contact points and said, “Listen, this is important. I should make an appearance in person.” As we're finished for the season, it was a timely thing.

Fisheries committee  I think the difference is that the Gulf of St. Lawrence fishing area is a lot different from the one we're in. We're into the one-knot to three-knot currents the whole time. We try to use the rule of thumb of 5% greater than the bottom deck. That's the maximum slack we'll have on our fishing gear, with lead rope interwoven about every 25 fathoms apart.

Fisheries committee  We just wouldn't be able to retrieve the gear, because most of the average depth of waters where we're hauling is 100 fathoms. It's 600 feet of water. When you're looking at it, there are five or six [Inaudible—Editor] and the upthrust of the vessel alone.... It's very seldom that you end up on the Grand Banks with a sea state of less than two metres, so it's just not practical to use anything less.

Fisheries committee  Yes. That's a common depth, actually, in the NAFO divisions 3K and 2J and in the northern part of 3L, and in some cases when we're fishing outside of Canada's 200 miles, we're down in that same depth of water. That type of rope then allows us to retrieve the gear out of that depth of water.

Fisheries committee  It's similar to the talk about the breaking strain. If you were fishing in your own.... With farmland, if you're on your own farmland, you know exactly where you put your crops, and in shoal water like the gulf, using that gear may have its advantages. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the guys operate in a lot of shoal water.

Fisheries committee  In my humble opinion, the fact that there were only Zoom calls held by invitation to look after such an important issue meant that the consultation process was faulty from the beginning, because over half the time was taken up just on presentations. There was hardly any industry involved in it at all, and for something like this, a major shakeup of the way we've been doing business, something should have been....

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Small. It's anywhere from 2,500 pounds per square inch to 3,500 pounds per square inch. That's basically the equivalent of a 9/16 polysteel rope or a 5/8 polysteel rope, and depending on the size of the vessel, it may go up a little bit from there, but not a huge amount.

Fisheries committee  No. Under normal conditions it was a tried and true practice for us. The reason we use 9/16 polysteel rope is that it actually holds less current and has less drag. We can go to a heavier rope, but it doesn't give us any more advantage because we're fishing in five-metre seas, and we usually knock off fishing when the seas are around six metres.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Minister, panel members and, certainly, the secretariat. Thanks for the opportunity to appear as a witness on this very important issue for our industry. My name is Gerard Chidley. I'm an independent owner-operator from Newfoundland and Labrador.