Northwestern Working Group (NWWG)

To reduce the workload the Ministry of Industries and Innovation in Iceland decided that Iceland would be without ICES advice for the 2020/2021 fishing year for stocks considered local (see letter in Figure 1). For NWWG, these stocks are cod (cod.27.5a), haddock (had.27.5a), saithe (pok.27.5a), herring (her.27.5a) and Icelandic slope beaked redfish (reb.27.5a14). In this report only tables (landings, survey indices and results of the assessment) were updated. Furthermore, the advice sheets for these stocks were not updated.

This year the meeting focused therefore only on five stocks: West Greenland inshore cod, East Greenland cod, Greenland halibut, golden redfish, and Greenland slope beaked redfish. For all stocks discussed during the meeting, the NWWG adopted the assessment which formed the basis for stock status and the premise for the forecasts. Based on the assessments the group produced a draft advice (abbreviated form) for all stocks.

There is no advice in 2020 for West Greenland offshore cod, shallow pelagic beaked redfish, and deep pelagic beaked redfish. Only catch tables for these stocks were updated.

The fisheries overview for the Icelandic Ecoregion was published in December 2019. Ecosystem overview for Greenland and Fisheries Overview for the Greenland and Faroese ecoregion are scheduled to be published in December 2020.