Fisheries committee  Are you talking about the fishing season just completed or the previous one?

Fisheries committee  The fishery usually takes place. In a given year, we start the fishery. There are observers, people hired by an independent company. They come aboard our boats to assess the catch, that is to say the composition of the catches in the traps. These are independent individuals who do their jobs.

Fisheries committee  First, 150,000 tonnes or 148,000 tonnes in 1995, these were not realistic measures for us fishermen. There is one thing that Mr. Moriyasu didn't tell you. In 1995, the biomass assessment wasn't 150,000 tonnes. In I don't know in what year, 2003 or 2004, the scientists had to review their entire system.

Fisheries committee  Some participants distributed a table to you. Do you have it? All right. Last year, the department assessed the biomass at approximately 45,000 tonnes or some 44,000 tonnes. The previous year, the biomass was estimated at approximately 48,000 tonnes. So there was a decline in biomass of approximately 4,000 tonnes from one year to the next.

Fisheries committee  I would have liked to make a few comments on your two questions, Mr. Blais. First, we've seen seal in the gulf in the past 10 years like we've never seen it before. Everywhere we see little heads popping out of the water all around the boat. There are so many that, for a few years now, a number of fishermen have been catching whole big seals right in the traps.

Fisheries committee  I think that a crisis like the one we're going through today may be foreseeable. I think we'll be going through a crisis every 10 years. In fact, there won't be crises all the time, but there will always be a year when the biomass will be extremely low. For example, Mr. Moriyasu said this morning that, in 1995, the commercial crab biomass in the gulf was assessed at 150,000 tonnes.

Fisheries committee  I'll try to answer you. Thank God we can make $800,000 in a year because, if we couldn't do that, we wouldn't be here before you. Mr. Bevan, this morning, the only figures that he presented... The message to the public and in the media is always the same: they say crab fishermen earn gross revenue of $800,000.

Fisheries committee  Good morning. My name is Joel Gionet. I've been fishing for crab since 1983. I started as a crewman on the family boat and, in 1990, became a captain among the crew. I'm still captain in 2010. So I've lived through the last three cycles. I saw the bottoms of the three cycles. The first—the worst—was in 1989-1990, the second in 1999-2000, and we're now in the third, this year, in 2009-2010.