ICES technical guidance for harvest control rules and stock assessments for stocks in categories 2 and 3

ICES provides advice for more than 250 stocks of fish and shellfish. More than 60% of these stocks are “data-limited” in that they do not have full analytical assessments, reference points, or short-term forecasts. Since 2010 ICES has worked to develop and test methods and advice rules for data-limited stocks in order to bring the best available science and information to managers for fisheries and biodiversity goals. To date, ICES data-limited advisory framework and methods were captured in several resources, all based on ICES Guidance for Data-Limited Stocks (ICES, 2012a). Since this initial application, ICES has worked to continuously advance and test the methods and to develop the advisory framework from the precautionary approach towards the MSY approach for data-limited stocks.