What percentage would make a sustainable fishery?
Well it s a much more complex question than that because it s not just what size you re harvesting; it s the rate at which you re harvesting the fish. It s the proportion of all the age classes that you re harvesting. The way the fishery is pursued right now, and with long-lines that take all sizes of fish, to reduce it so that the population was sustainable, considering the size classes that are being caught by the gear, would require a reduction of close to half, I believe. It is quite significant though. The landings, I think in the North Atlantic were something like 16,000 metric tons last year. And the sustainable would be less than 10,000 tons. So we re talking about a substantial reduction in landings. And that still would just stabilize the population, it wouldn t allow the stock to rebuild. So if you want to rebuild the stock, the quota would have to be less than 10,000 metric tons. The current harvest levels, ocean-wide is about 16,000 metric tons. When you say ocean wide, yo
