Mr. John Menarry:

From my understanding, some of it is based on landings and some of it is based on bottom trawl surveys. We know that one of the major issues with the inshore sector is that it is data poor. There are processes in place to record the data but, for whatever reason, they are not working. There is a lack of data from the inshore sector. The sector would be reliant on pollock and the surveys that are used and feed into advice. From my understanding, a lot of the analysis was based on beam trawl surveys, which is a method of fishing that would not primarily catch pollock. If we are relying on data from a method that does not catch the fish, we are not going to see the fish. If we do not have the data from inshore fishing, the data will not be there. The EU, in hindsight, took the view that if it is not seeing it, it must not be there. It decided something had to be done and the fishery was closed to us.