EC and Norway request on in-year management advice for Sandeels-2009

The European Community (EC) and Norway requested ICES to provide further advice to allow EC to apply the

procedure described in COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 43/2009, ANNEX IID.

ICES understands the method referred to in the request as the method for setting the TAC for sandeel in the North Sea as suggested by ICES in its advice on harvest control rules and long-term management strategies for sandeels (ICES Advice, 2007, 2008a) and that the TAC calculated by this method shall apply to all catches of sandeel (EC and Norway).

Annex IID prescribes a Real-Time Monitoring (RTM) fishery of sandeel during weeks 14 to 18 in 2009 to estimate the abundance and mean weight of the 2008 year class. These estimates are used in the formula

TAC2009 = -287 + 3.98 * N1 * (Wobs / Wm)

where N1 is the real-time estimate of age group 1 sandeel in billions derived from the exploratory fishery in 2009; the

TAC is expressed in 1000 tonnes; Wobs is the observed mean weight of age group 1 during the exploratory fishery; and Wm (3.8 g) is the long-term mean weight of an age 1 sandeel.

The estimation of the year class (N1) is as previously outlined in ICES (2007) and ICES (2008a).