Expert report on scoping ecosystem approaches to fisheries management to assist NEAFC request to ICES

This report is the has been compiled by four experts in ecosystem approach to aid ICES answer a request from NEAFC on Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management. Five overlapping approaches are considered: two ecological risk assessments approaches (one using qualitative risk assessment based on expert opinion, and one using semi-quantitative methods), the NAFO EAF roadmap, European marine strategies and ecosystem status indicators. Tables document the scope, use, maturity, requirements, assumptions, caveats, benefits and drawbacks of each approach. In summary the ecological risk assessment with qualitative risk assessment based on expert opinion offers opportunities to managers when the evidence base is sparse or has varied characteristics and veracities. It uses qualitative methods providing relative or indicative information into risk assessments to support the provision of general guidance on management actions. The semi-quantitative ecological risk assessment approach offers opportunities to managers when the evidence base is increasingly quantitative. It uses many methods with their selection, depending on the available data, to support management action. It allows for the tailoring of methods to specific taxa or to absolute estimates of risk and attribution between fleets making connections back to management decisions easier. The NAFO EAF Roadmap offers an approach to address changing ecosystems dynamics on fisheries production potential and the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems in a risk-based framework, but may not necessarily address a full suite of EAFM/EBFM objectives. The EBFM relevant components of European marine strategies offers an empirically driven approach to inform decision-making which is resource intensive and challenging when determining effective management measures and priorities and assessments of risk, and risk equivalence. Ecosystem status indicators framing fisheries decision-making offers an opportunity to managers to supplement existing management decision processes with EAFM/EBFM information to provide context to decisions, is most effective when delivered via risk tables to improve consistency of information use in decision making.