Interim Report of the Working Group on Small Pelagic Fishes, their Ecosystems and Climate Impact (WGSPEC)

The Working Group on Small Pelagic Fishes, their Ecosystems and Climate Impact (WGSPEC) had its annual meeting in Plymouth, United Kingdom, 3–5 April 2017, which was attended by fourteen scientists and more than forty students from four different countries.The meeting started with an open-day event, during which the work done by WGSPEC and more in general the activities and opportunities provided by ICES were presented to students and early career scientists from Plymouth and from other UK and international universities. Attendees were engaged in a series of discussions around some key ques-tions/problems raised by the talks on fish-related issues and on a recommendation re-ceived by the joint ICES/OSPAR/HELCOM Working Group on Seabirds (JWGBird).The following two days were dedicated to discuss the progress done on ToR a) and ToR b). In particular for the ToR a): the work needed to complete the two manuscripts to be submitted at the special issue of Deep Sea Research was discussed in light of the feed-back received during the annual meeting in Victoria, Canada, and elsewhere. For the ToR b): preliminary comparison and analysis of the data of anchovy eggs and larvae col-lected in the Bay of Biscay, Catalan Sea and Ligurian Sea were shown and discussed