Search

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report is the 10th of a suite of STECF EWG reports dedicated to the evaluation of the implementation of the Western Mediterranean Sea Multi-Annual management Plan (hereafter, MAP), following EWG reports 18-09, 18-13, 19-01, 19-14, 20-13, 21-01, 21- 13, 22-01 and 22-11. The group was requested to continue the development of socio-economic indicators to be used in the evaluation of management measures for the West Med MAP in both West Med management units (EMU1 and EMU 1) (TOR1). Two roadmaps were discussed, a short term approach and a long term approach which would consider the expansion of all the mixed-fisheries bio-economic models to both management units. As a first step, the group focused on the proposal of harmonizing the economic indicators across the models implemented (TOR2). The group was than requested to further develop the approach implemented during EWG 22-01 to identify persistence hotspots of the six target species of the West Med MAP using scientific survey data (MEDITS) in combination to commercial spatial data (VMS joined with logbooks), to test existing and additional closure areas (TOR 3). The group was also requested to revise Article 8 of the 2023 fishing opportunities for the West Med MAP (COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) 2023/195), which lists the compensation mechanisms that MSs can implement within the West Med MAP to obtain additional fishing days in 2023 (TOR 4). For TOR 1 a roadmap was discussed and proposed on how to organise the work on socio-economic assessments for the West Med MAP in 2023. The EWG suggests that here should be a three-step process: a scoping exercise (done with EWG 23- 01), a meeting with stakeholders in the middle of the year to discuss their perception of the socio-economic consequences of measures of the West Med MAP and the running of scenarios during EWG 23-11 with results from socio-economic assessments. The EWG notes that the modellers have only the five-day meeting in September to run scenarios. Therefore, it would be crucial for the success of the assessments that the 6 scenarios provided by DG Mare for the EWG 22-11 and with some adjustments for EWG 23-01 will not change for EWG 23-11. It is crucial because those scenarios are already implemented in the models and the implementation of new scenarios would take a lot of time. The EWG proposes to run a few additional scenarios with only one measures to separate impacts of certain measures from the six scenarios where a mixture of measures is included. This would hopefully allow to give an indication what additional efforts may be necessary to reach MSY (in 2025 but also beyond in case the objective is not reached by 2025) and when gains from the implementation of the West Med Plan could be expected. The EWG observes that modelers need to put in additional effort and resources to improve the models for an improved assessment of the West Med MAP. The models were not originally developed for the assessment of the West Med MAP and only cover parts of the area of the Western Mediterranean. Such an improvement of the models could also include work to provide longer-term socio-economic assessments of measures where modelers need to take additional assumptions into account. The EWG notes that it would be beneficial if modelers receive a basic list of assumptions for key economic variables before the EWG 23-11 meeting in September. In 2022, for example, the increased fuel costs were an important factor regarding the economic performance of the fleets. In 2023 fuel costs have decreased but there are other cost categories with a substantial increase. The EWG concludes that DG Mare should not change the 6 provided scenarios substantially before the EWG 23-11 meeting in September. This would allow the modelers to run the models during the meeting and provide the socio-economic results. The EWG concludes that STECF and DG Mare should further discuss how resources could be provided to modelers to improve the applied models. The EWG concludes that the chairs of EWG 23-01 and 23-11 will provide a list of assumptions for the implementation of the models regarding key variables for the socio-economic assessments (short- and long-term). For TOR 2 the EWG discussed what variables and indicators the applied models include and provide. From that discussion a list of indicators was developed for which modelers will be able to provide results in the EWG 23-11 report. The EWG concludes that a list of indicators is provided for which EWG 23-11 will present results in autumn 2023. For TOR 3 the EWG notes that new closure areas for 2023 were implemented only by Spain (EMU 1) (Orden APA/80/2023). All closures areas implemented under the West Med MAP are described to allow testing if their implementation would reduce the catches of juveniles and adults of the six target species of the MAP by 15-25%. The EWG notes that the methodology followed to prioritise, developing and updating closure areas based on their conservation value on the basis of existing closures, proposed closures from EWG 22-01 and new proposals developed by EWG 23-01 based on updated MEDISEH layers is similar to the one used during EWG 22- 01. Updated MEDISEH layers were used for priority species (ARA, MUT and HKE) in combination with old MEDISEH layers for other species and distribution maps of commercial effort from EWG 22-01. Calculation of the percentage of the trawlable GSA area closed to fishing is higher in EMU 1 than EMU 2, therefore the estimation of additional closure areas on top of the existing ones foccused on this management unit. Additional closure areas to test were based on persistence hotsposts from survey data and from areas of high effort in order to impact directly on the reduction of fishing mortality. The EWG notes that the exisiting and additional closures could be tested only in EMU 2 and GSA 7 as for GSA 1, 5 and 6 the extension of the spatially-explicit model ISIS-Fish is not complete yet and it is still limited to a single species (HKE). The EWG notes that closure areas in GSA 7 were tested with two different methods. A static method comparing effort distribution data before and after the closures implementation in 2020, and a dynamic method applying ISIS-Fish. The first method showed how the establishment of the spatio-temporal closure imposed a strong seasonal constraint to the fishing effort in the Gulf of Lions, and that the fishermen community responded quite well to the new rule, although vessels increased their fishing effort along the closure border, with a typical « fishing the line » pattern, especially in the fall. The second model showed that introducing an additional closure did not improve the rebuilding of the hake stock, while changing the closures from seasonal to permanent suggested the strongest effect. The EWG notes that in EMU 2 that temporal closures for the whole fleet reduce global effort while additional spatial closures increase effort towards coastal areas (depths

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines This report documents the outcomes of STECF Expert Working Group 22-09: 2022 stock assessments of demersal stocks in the western Mediterranean Sea from the meeting held remotely from 5th to 11th September 2022. A total of 20 fish stocks considered and 18 were fully evaluated. Two stocks had prior advice from 2021 with catch advice for 2022 and 2023, and this is reiterated here. The EWG reports age based assessments, target Fs, with short term forecasts for 15 of the remaining 18 stocks, of these 15, 12 were also analysed for biomass reference points. Catch advice for three stocks was based on ICES category three evaluations of biomass indices. The content of the report gives the STECF terms of reference; the basis of the evaluations; assessments, reference point calculations; summaries of state of stock and advised catch or F based on either the MSY approach for assessed stocks and category 3 based advice for those without assessments. The report contains the full stock assessment reports for the 15 assessments, the exploration of assessments and category 3 evaluations for the remaining three stocks. The report also contains the STECF observations and conclusions on the assessment report. These conclusions come from the STECF Plenary meeting November 2022. European Union Published Refereed

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report, on methods for supporting stock assessment in the Mediterranean (STECF-21-02), addresses the data checking and preparation for stock assessment once the data has been submitted following the annual data calls. The report provides an overview of the data errors and quality control carried out on both commercial landings data and MEDITS survey data. The analyses reported also address the small fraction of commercial catch with sampling gaps, and how these are assigned appropriate length frequency distributions. The results of these check and assignments are provided by species, GSA and country. Quality checks were carried out on Medits data check consistency of the main reporting files and highlighting where data inconsistencies occurred. Additionally the total landings reported to the European Commission under the Black & Med-Sea data call, the Fisheries Independent Data call and the Annual Economic Report data call were compared at species aggregated to GSA. Some important differences were observed and these are reported. In addition the EWG reviewed a technical report on the sampling of commercial catch in the Greek Fisheries, the review and some suggested further work are included in this report. European Union, Joint Research Centre Published Refereed

The Workshop on guidelines and methods for the evaluation of rebuilding plans (WKREBUILD) chaired by Vanessa Trijoulet (Denmark) and Martin Pastoors (Netherlands) met from 24 to 28 February 2020. The workshop attracted 27 participants from the US, Canada, Europe and FAO. When stocks are estimated to be below Blim1 and there is no perceived possibility of rebuilding above Blim within the time-frame of a short-term forecast, ICES has regularly recommended zero catch in combination with the development of a rebuilding plan. A review was carried out on the international experience on the development, evaluation and implementation of rebuilding plans for fisheries management in the Northeast Atlantic and in other fora around the world. In the Northeast Atlantic, rebuilding plans have been implemented in the past (e.g. the cod recovery plans of the early 2000s) but ICES has played a limited role in evaluating the performance of such recovery plans and does not have the tools or criteria to evaluate such plans. Recently, when a rebuilding plan for herring in 6.a 7.bc was submitted to ICES for evaluation, ICES refrained from providing such an evaluation. In the US and Canadian approaches, the legal framework determines the triggering and required elements of rebuilding plans. Such a legal imperative does not exist in the Northeast Atlantic. Nevertheless, the US and Canadian experiences provided useful elements that could be included in establishing ICES approach to rebuilding plans. Several case studies were presented on potential tools for the evaluation of rebuilding plans. Particular attention was given to evaluating options for harvest control rule options of such a plan. The tools focused mostly on short to medium term explorations of the probability of achieving a rebuilding of stocks. Because rebuilding plan evaluations need to be ready and available at short-notice when required, it was concluded that relatively standardized tools (i.e. packages or compiled code) to carry out such evaluations would be preferable over custommade evaluation tools. In addition, certain modelling considerations were highlighted as important such as realistic assumptions of productivity, uncertainty, bias in assessments and implementation error and the possibility of estimating the probability of achieving a rebuilding of stocks.Criteria for the acceptability of rebuilding plans will require an agreed Limit Reference Point (LRP) for initiating a rebuilding plan, definition of targets for fishing mortality or stock biomass, time-frames and the acceptable probabilities whether the rebuilding targets have been achieved. All of these should take into account realistic levels of uncertainty and being consistent with international best (scientific) practices. Although it was recognized that Blim would be the most likely candidate LRP triggering a rebuilding plan, the current approach in ICES for the determination of Blim was questioned during the workshop because it requires a more or less subjective classification of the stock-recruitment pairs into different types. In other regions, the LRP is often set as a certain proportion of the SSB at maximum sustainable yield (BMSY), e.g. 40% BMSY. If changes in productivity have been experienced in recent years at these are taken into account when estimating MSY reference points, the proportion of BMSY approach would likely lead to greater changes in the estimated value of LRP than the current ICES procedures used to estimate Blim, which rely on stock-recruitment pairs or definition of the lowest observed biomass (Bloss). This could have a large impact on the rebuilding target for stocks that experience changes in productivity regimes. Some concerns were raised regarding the often small distance between Blim and MSY Btrigger2 reference points for ICES stocks in comparison to the distance between trigger and limit in other jurisdictions. MSY Btrigger could therefore represent a late trigger to start decreasing fishing mortality when SSB is decreasing. The workshop recommended a future workshop on the revision of the procedure to estimate reference points within the ICES framework.An estimate of the minimum time (TMIN) by which rebuilding may be expected to be achieved, could be calculated by assuming zero catch and should be used as baseline for comparison with other rebuilding scenarios. The maximum time for rebuilding in the US and New Zealand is set to TMAX = 2 * TMIN or to TMIN plus one generation time1 (average length of time between when an individual is born and the birth of its offspring NRC (2014)). While the workshop did not arrive at an overall agreement on a default value for TMAX, it was suggested that TMAX = 2 * TMIN could be explored as a potential bounding on the rebuilding period, even though this should be subject to scientific analysis of potential effects on the stock in question. The workshop generated a guidance table summarizing the best practices for evaluation of rebuilding plans against the potential criteria of acceptability. The guidance table includes elements such as estimation of reference points, time-frames for rebuilding, rebuilding targets, handling uncertainties and bias, probability of achieving rebuilding targets and visualizing results. The workshop recommended that a follow-up workshop (WKREBUILD2) be organized for testing the guidelines with actual test cases, with the aim of defining more specific criteria and guidelines, i.e. learning by doing. Some of the elements that were discussed in the workshop but that have not (yet) entered the guidelines for evaluation of rebuilding plans are socio-economic trade-offs (e.g. between fast and slow rebuilding), mixed fisheries aspects (e.g. unavoidable bycatch due to mixed fisheries) and elements in rebuilding plans other than the HCR part (e.g. monitoring to improve the knowledge base). Most of the discussion at WKREBUILD was centred on stocks with analytical assessments (Category 1+2). Identifying when a data limited stock is in need of rebuilding (or has rebuilt) and how to evaluate rebuilding plan options for such stocks would likely require a separate process.