Interim Report of the Working Group on Maritime Systems (WGMARS)

The Working Group on Maritime Systems (WGMARS) held its annual meeting 2018 on 19–23 February 2018 in The Hague, The Netherlands.Continuing its work on “understanding IEAs”, WGMARS prepared the structure and story line for its planned IEA manuscript on IEAs in concept and in practice, with the practice section focusing on the work of the ICES regional IEA WGs. Our discussion and conclusions will be based on a review of IEA literature and ICES IEA documents, as well as findings from semi-structured interviews of the regional IEA WG chairs (draft interview protocol in preparation) and a case study of the Working Group on Integrated Assessments of the North Sea (WGINOSE).The presentation and discussion of the Working Group on the Northwest Atlantic Re-gional Sea (WGNARS) IEA process in the Workshop on IEA in the Northwest Atlantic (WKINWA; during the 2017 WGMARS meeting) has stimulated WGINOSE (WGINOSE chair Andrew Kenny was in attendance) to also follow a more inter- and transdisciplinary IEA approach. As a first step toward this IEA approach, WGINOSE needs to involve social scientists in their interdisciplinary science and begin discus-sions on management objectives with stakeholders to move toward a transdisciplinary approach to IEA.WGMARS therefore organized and co-chaired the embedded WGMARS-WGINOSE workshop during the WGMARS 2018 meeting, with a focus on IEA in the North Sea. The workshop successfully carried out its three interrelated goals: (1) to advance our understanding of Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEA) by incorporating social, economic and institutional aspects: What are the driving management questions – on national and EU level ; 2) to explore the use of two possible conceptual modelling tools for facilitating a truly interdisciplinary approach to integrated ecosystem assessments; and 3) to discuss the tools’ usefulness with both stakeholders and working group mem-bers. Conclusions of the workshop are reported under #5 scientific highlights.WGMARS also, between our 2017 and 2018 annual meetings, initiated, co-chaired and participated in a variety of ICES workshops and meetings designed to advance the current state of knowledge available for IEAs in Europe in general and the North Sea in particular.