Fisheries committee  Briefly, I can just say that I agree with Martin and his approach. I think the PEIFA feels the same way the MFU does on this topic.

Fisheries committee  They don't sample only eggs and larvae. That is one section of the stock assessment. The other major section is that they do take landing data. I've done a sampling for them in the past. We'll do a sample of approximately 200 fish. We measure all 200 fish, and then from those 2

Fisheries committee  That's 100% correct.

Fisheries committee  When there is a commercial fishery going on, there is a wide array within area 4T, which is all of the gulf, involving numerous provinces, so they all pitch in. I know that last year with no commercial fishery—I believe it might have been from the MFU, but they can correct me he

Fisheries committee  I would, yes.

Fisheries committee  I think there would be a number of management measures that could be considered, such as a lower TAC, an increased size. However, ultimately I would feel more comfortable talking to the mackerel advisory group here on P.E.I. and submitting the comments in writing to your committe

Fisheries committee  I'd actually prefer to hand this to Mr. Cheverie, if that's okay, as he's a fisherman from our association.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the questions. From a science perspective, all the science is pointing to obviously the decrease and the decline in the stock. I don't think there's any disputing that. I think there's more data that we can collect to get a more thorough picture and integrate that

Fisheries committee  That is a loaded question. Small pelagics are definitely on the bottom end of that food chain, so everything larger is basically reliant upon them. We could definitely anticipate some negative effects to our ecosystem, but I would not be able to pinpoint exactly what those would

Fisheries committee  I don't know whether I have enough time to explain it all. Right now we're really only seeing up to five-year-olds, if that, and there are very few of them in our population. The requirement is that the larger, healthier fish are producing larger and healthier eggs. We're missing

Fisheries committee  I would have to defer to the DFO standards that are set up for that. They have “critical”, “cautious” and “healthy” zones. I think we would just go along with those zones, but ultimately, if the U.S. is fishing, then the mackerel are coming out of the water anyway. As long as the

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. The information that I passed along in my opening remarks is an actual quote from DFO, so it's not research I did; it's DFO work. I do believe that in the immediate future, the moratorium on the seining fleet wouldn't make a whole lot of difference

Fisheries committee  We talk a lot about gear selectivity and the importance of gear selectivity. The hook and line and the gillnets, as Nathan pointed out, are much more selective than a seiner is. Also, with the hook and line, if you drop your hooks and you're in a school of small fish, then you ca

Fisheries committee  That brings into play the moratorium on seiners to focus on the inshore fleets that have hook and line and gillnets, which can cause less damage and allow the stock to rebuild while still allowing a small fishery.

Fisheries committee  Yes, on the second part of the question, thank you. Basically, my understanding of the way the U.S. works is they set an overall TAC based on the stock assessment from Canada and the U.S. Once that overall TAC is set, then they subtract the Canadian TAC. If there are 4,000 tonne