Chair's Notes from the Annual Meeting of Advisory Working Group Chairs (WGCHAIRS)

This agenda item was introduced by Poul Degnbol from the Secretariat. The table of content for the 2011 Advisory Report by eco-region is based on the 2010 ToC updated with expected requests for advice, new stocks in the Memorandum of Understanding with the European Commission, the addition of indicator overviews overall and on a regional basis. The MSY section will probably be revised based on the results of WKFRAME2 and the experience in formulating the 2011 advice.

New MOU species were assigned to specific Expert Groups rather than WGNEW. Boarfish was assigned to two groups but should probably go to WGWIDE, probably a single stock straddling two eco-regions and the methods are likely similar. Several new stocks were assigned to WGHMM and it is not clear that the Working Group will be able to make progress on these. It has to be discussed with Chairs to decide where the stocks will be handled as well as what will be done where and when. Some stocks may have to go through WGNEW before going to individual Expert Groups. Catch and effort data might be available for all new species, but biological data may not. Participants understood that full fledge analytical assessments are not necessari-ly expected for these new species.