Evaluations of Management strategies for Norway pout in the North Sea and Skagerrak

Request

On basis of a request from the EU Commission 8th February 2013 ICES is asked for additional evaluations of modified and alternative harvest control rules for the Nor-way pout stock in the North Sea and Skagerrak.

EU request to ICES on changing the TAC year for Norway pout.

In 2012, the EU and Norway submitted a request to ICES to evaluate various measures for the management of Norway pout. ICES responded to this request in October 2012.

The first option that ICES evaluated was a management strategy based on the existing ICES escapement strategy for Norway pout (catch should not exceed an amount that allows stock biomass to be above 150 000 tonnes at the beginning of the following year), modified to in-clude absolute constraints on the annual TAC (a minimum TAC higher than zero and a ceil-ing on the TAC).

For this management strategy, ICES evaluated only the option whereby the September as-sessment is used for the TAC for the next calendar year (with an in-year update in May, but not in September). It was noted that this option, where the TAC for quarter 4 is set from the May assessment without knowing the recruitment indices from the third quarter, is less ro-bust than the alternative, which has an additional in-year update in September.In the light of this, ICES is asked to again evaluate a management strategy based on the existing ICES escapement strategy, but where the TAC year is changed to 1 November – 31 October rather than 1 January – 31 December. In this case, the TAC for quarter 4 and for quarters 1 to 3 of the following year would be fixed on the basis of the September assessment, with no update in May.