Search

The Working Group on Governance of the Regional Database & Estimation System (WGRDBESGOV) provides the governance function for both the existing Regional Database (RDB) and the new Regional Database & Estimation System (RDBES) that is currently in development. It is composed of representatives from ICES member countries and EU Regional Coordination Groups (RCGs). In this report the WGRDBESGOV reviews the RDBES developments performed during 2021 and plans for the work required in 2022 and beyond. It also considers how RDB data has been used and proposes changes required to the current Data Policy.

This work is the result of an international research effort to determine the main impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on marine recreational fishing. Changes were assessed on (1) access to fishing, derived from lockdowns and other mobility restrictions; (2) ecosystems, because of alterations in fishing intensity and human presence; (3) the blue economy, derived from alterations in the investments and expenses of the fishers; and (4) society, in relation to variations in fishers’ health and well-being. For this, a consultation with experts from 16 countries was carried out, as well as an international online survey aimed at recreational fishers, that included specific questions designed to capture fishers’ heterogeneity in relation to behavior, skills and know-how, and vital involvement. Fishers’ participation in the online survey (5,998 recreational fishers in 15 countries) was promoted through a marketing campaign. The sensitivity of the fishers’ clustering procedure, based on the captured heterogeneity, was evaluated by SIMPER analysis and by generalized linear models. Results from the expert consultation highlighted a worldwide reduction in marine recreational fishing activity. Lower human-driven pressures are expected to generate some benefits for marine ecosystems. However, experts also identified high negative impacts on the blue economy, as well as on fisher health and well-being because of the loss of recreational fishing opportunities. Most (98%) of the fishers who participated in the online survey were identified as advanced, showing a much higher degree of commitment to recreational fishing than basic fishers (2%). Advanced fishers were, in general, more pessimistic about the impacts of COVID19, reporting higher reductions in physical activity and fish consumption, as well as poorer quality of night rest, foul mood, and raised more concerns about their health status. Controlled and safe access to marine recreational fisheries during pandemics would provide b

WGCATCH contributes to ensure the quality of commercial catch data, which underpins stock assessments and advice. At this year’s WGCATCH meeting all the proposed ToRs were covered and objectives were met. The group started documenting the national estimation procedures (Section 3.2). Most of the countries use ratio estimators for their estimation. Recent discussions at WGCATCH and other EGs have increasingly highlighted that estimation techniques currently used by many countries to process commercial catch data may not be the most up-to-date and/or ignore sampling design and/or are far from transparent and/or involve significant levels of adhoc decisions. Therefore, WGCATCH recommends a series of practical workshops on estimation procedures for the next 3 years to produce best practice guidelines for choosing methods and variables used to raise commercial sampling data. Under ToR a.3, the sample size thresholds used for national data provision were documented. WGCATCH discussed extensively use of specific thresholds, however, it is not possible to come up with a single universal rule to be applied across all countries and stocks. Instead, WGCATCH advises that specific analytical steps are taken during the benchmark process to test and evaluate the impacts of applying or not thresholds to national data before providing the data to the assessment. Intersessional work was carried out to develop tools to be used by the data submitters and stock coordinators to understand and summarise the quality and quantity of the data provided to Intercatch (Section 3.3). The work developed under SSF, ToR b), continued to develop best practice guidelines on SSF data collection, with quantitative analyses on the coverage/completeness of fishing activity. PCA analysis was carried out of data incompleteness issue or over-declaration to build a risk’ map where each country*area is positioned (Section 4.2). The sub-group reviewed the proposed CL and CE data formats from RDBES cor

The European Parliament is concerned about the lack of information on the relevance of nine million Europeans engaged in marine recreational fishing (MRF), committing Member States to encourage environmental and socioeconomic sustainability of the sector. The objective of this paper is to provide recommendations to guide research actions and management policies, based on the case of Spain, a key country because its complex administrative regimen and the intensive use of its coasts, including 900,000 recreational fishers. A review of the state of the knowledge was performed to identify research gaps, while governance challenges were identified in an International Symposium on MRF. In the last two decades research on MRF was remarkable (139 publications). However, public investment in research (€2.44 million in the same period) should be improved to cover knowledge gaps on socioeconomic relevance, on impacts on vulnerable species and on implications of global warming. The license system should be standardized to allow estimation of effort, catch and expenditure. Social networks, mobile applications, fisher ecological knowledge, and citizen science programs could help to develop cost-effective research and management. Sciencebased, adaptive policies should improve the allocation of resources between MRF and other stakeholders, introducing co-management to reduce conflicts.

The RDBES is the new Regional DataBase and Estimation System. The RDBES is expected to replace the previous RDB and InterCatch by the end of 2021 and will bring significant improvements and transparency in the provision of estimates from commercial fisheries to stock assessment and other end-users. The developments of the RDBES meet the EU-MAP requirements of progress towards statistically sound sampling schemes. The RDBES data model and associated database are able to store, among other, sampling data alongside the elements required to describe the sampling design used in data collection. Upload of data to and estimation within the RDBES will require significant adaptation of the data collection processes of national institutes in several areas, including data storage, but also sampling design, field protocols, estimation and data provision to end-users. To secure a soft transition there is a need to intensify internal planning of these adaptations from 2020. The Workshop on Estimation with the RDBES data model (WKRDB-EST) prepared data for 8 of the 13 upper hierarchies of the RDBES and developed a first set of R-scripts that handles designbased estimation in the RDBES data model. Developments and tests were positive and confirmed the usefulness of the data model for design-based estimation. These developments are publically available in the ICES GitHub (https://GitHub.com/ices-eg/WK_RDBES/tree/master/WKRDBEST). The RDBES core group will continue the development and produce an R-package that aggregates a) a generic set of estimation functions and b) vignettes documenting design-based estimation in each type of sampling hierarchy. WKRDB-EST examined and tested version v.1.17 of the RDBES model with feedback being obtained from 15 countries on 8 of the 13 upper hierarchies of the RDBES. The data model can now be considered relatively stable with mostly minor issues being identified. The RDBES core group will discuss these issues and incorporate in a future

Marine recreational fishing (MRF) is a high-participation activity with large economic value and social benefits globally, and it impacts on some fish stocks. Although reporting MRF catches is a European Union legislative requirement, estimates are only available for some countries. Here, data on numbers of fishers, participation rates, days fished, expenditures, and catches of two widely targeted species were synthesized to provide European estimates of MRF and placed in the global context. Uncertainty assessment was not possible due to incomplete knowledge of error distributions; instead, a semi-quantitative bias assessment was made. There were an estimated 8.7 million European recreational sea fishers corresponding to a participation rate of 1.6%. An estimated 77.6 million days were fished, and expenditure was €5.9 billion annually. There were higher participation, numbers of fishers, days fished and expenditure in the Atlantic than the Mediterranean, but the Mediterranean estimates were generally less robust. Comparisons with other regions showed that European MRF participation rates and expenditure were in the mid-range, with higher participation in Oceania and the United States, higher expenditure in the United States, and lower participation and expenditure in South America and Africa. For both northern European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax, Moronidae) and western Baltic cod (Gadus morhua, Gadidae) stocks, MRF represented 27% of the total removals. This study highlights the importance of MRF and the need for bespoke, regular and statistically sound data collection to underpin European fisheries management. Solutions are proposed for future MRF data collection in Europe and other regions to support sustainable fisheries management.