Got to take issue with you on that one Foxsea. Went it comes to conservation science, the numbers DO matter. The numbers are paramount because they represent FACTS, not OPINION. We don't have good numbers now and this is what we should be arguing, and challenging and demanding to get. From DFO, from Charlie's Web site sources, from anywhere, but we need the numbers.
For once conservation leaves the realm of science and data, and becomes merely a matter for posturing, and politics, media messages and nuances and we make "compromises", then it becomes doomed and we go the way of the East Coast cod. That fishery was sunk by politics not by science, and it should be a lesson for us all....... You CANNOT manage conservation in the political arena, because politics ignores and is anathema to ecology and nature, precisely BECAUSE the latter is complicated. But putting your head in the sand and just pretending that understanding that complexity is not a fundamental requirement is heading for disaster.........