Flounder in Division IIIa and Subarea IV

New data  (landings and survey data) available  for this stock do not change  the  perception of the  stock. Therefore, the advice  for this  fishery in 2015 is the  same as the advice for 2014: Based on the  ICES approach for data limited stocks, ICES advisesthat landings should be no more than 3160 tonnes. Discards are known to take place, but the data are insufficient to estimate a discard proportion that could be applied to give catch advice; therefore total catches cannot be calculated.

TACs may not be appropriate as a management tool for bycatch species. Management of dab and flounder under a combined species TAC prevents effective control of the single species exploitation rates and could potentially lead to the overexploitation of either species.