Fisheries committee  —of that biomass that could be removed so the stock would remain in the healthy zone. The different assumptions we're making with respect to natural mortality in part explain the two end numbers.

Fisheries committee  The shrimp stock started declining in the mid-2000s.

Fisheries committee  I don't have the graph, but it was in the mid-2000. Years before that we started to see the three cohorts of redfish appearing, so even at the time when the biomass of redfish was critically low, we started to see a decrease in our indices for the biomass of shrimp in the gulf, w

Fisheries committee  Yes, and actually an example of the application of the ecosystem approach that we alluded to earlier was that, with the changing conditions in the gulf, there was a realization that our framework to assess was not valid, so we have reviewed the assessment framework to specificall

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chair, I thank the member for his question. Environmental factors and climate change are the dominant factors, so we don't expect Gulf shrimp—

Fisheries committee  Yes. We don't expect stocks to return to what they were in the 1990s, when they were at their peak.

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chair, I can speak to that question. Basically the amount that science has arrived at is the potential removals in total for those three cohorts that we saw appearing, so it's not an annual TAC recommendation; and it's the maximum amount—

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chair, it's important because, in fact, the decline of the shrimp started in the mid 2000s before we started to see the strong cohort for redfish. It actually limits the suitable habitat for shrimp across the gulf. Because of the warming of the temperature, the acidification

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question. We don't fully understand why there's a natural mortality, as you described. It's still ongoing. That's something that started four years ago for the deepwater redfish, and we started to see it two years ago for the Acadian redfish. There

Fisheries committee  We don’t really understand natural mortality and the decline we’re seeing now, given the absence of fishing. We began tracking individual growth in new cohorts in 2013. Apart from the biomass we’ve measured over time, there are other factors. At the time, there was talk of havi

Fisheries committee  Yes, that is correct.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. The nuance is that we don’t have an estimate of the total quantity of shrimp present in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We use an indicator whose variations we track over time.

Fisheries committee  There is no direct link to estimate the total number of shrimp available in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Another important point is—

Fisheries committee  Let me clarify that we have reached the same conclusion in our previous work. In the southern gulf, we have established that the grey seal has an impact on the recovery of groundfish. I think where there's confusion is for harp seal off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and

Fisheries committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Cormier.