Fisheries committee  Thanks for the question, Mr. Chair. It's very important. Those fishers are out on the water. They see things that we don't necessarily. It's very important to get their input. It's very important to get that input in a coordinated way, and that's why we have our advisory committee process.

Fisheries committee  Capelin are one of the more difficult species to forecast and, therefore, to manage. They have relatively short life spans. The populations often consist of a few key age groups, so you will have kind of a big population and then a couple of years with a small population. That means it's quite variable.

Fisheries committee  Across all of what we do, we certainly see the impacts of climate change on both coasts. We see species often moving north to some extent, although that's not true everywhere. We have seen significant changes in the gulf, for instance. I'm just going to turn to Tony for capelin itself.

Fisheries committee  Maybe I'll answer this. We don't have any evidence that capelin are a really important part of the seal diet. Of course, capelin are not very big. I think the predators that we focused on are the ones the member mentioned, and I would also note redfish as a potential predator for capelin and something that we need to take into account as we look at potentially reopening part of that fishery.

Fisheries committee  Go ahead, Adam.

Fisheries committee  Go ahead, Tony.

Fisheries committee  Go ahead, Sylvain.

Fisheries committee  I would just say that at this time we don't have a precautionary approach, so we don't have it in the critical zone, the healthy zone, or the cautious zone. That's not to say that we don't make decisions based on science. We do. That's the science that, as the minister referred to, will be brought to the stock assessment on April 20 and then to the advisory committee on April 25.

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chair, perhaps I can add to that. The next advisory committee is going to be held on April 25, as I think members know. Certainly the two individuals will be very welcome to take part in those discussions. Our understanding of the ice conditions is that there's still some ice.

Fisheries committee  I don't think we have that information at hand. Mr. Chair, I just want to clarify this. Is this herring across the country, specifically on the west coast, or in 4RST?

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chair, we can certainly get the member that information.

Fisheries committee  Tony, go ahead.

Fisheries committee  If we move the fishery date up a month to April 1, which is what we are considering doing and what the meeting that will happen later in this month will consider, we would need to make sure that the science assessments that we need to do for that assessment meeting are done in time so that we can have the meeting in March.

Fisheries committee  Go ahead, Sylvain.

Fisheries committee  Sylvain, perhaps you could comment on this one.