REPORT OF THE STUDY GROUP ON MIXED FISHERIES MANAGEMENT (SGMIXMAN)

•

The 2008 SGMixMan meeting continued the work of previous meetings in developing the Fcube (Fleet & Fishery Forecast) approach to giving advice on mixed fisheries.

•

Fcube implementations have been made for demersal fisheries in the North Sea and Bay of Biscay areas. These have encountered some problems in compiling data but the method itself fulfils the requirements for a simple model for mixed fisheries analyses that were specified when the group was established in 2006.

•

Fishery data collection within the European Union is presently funded to a large extent under the EU Data Collection Regulation (DCR). This is at present under revision and from 2009 it is anticipated that data will be collected by fleet and fishery, rather than by stock. This involves the definition of fleets and fisheries that are consistent across nations within each region and should greatly improve the availability of fleet and fishery data for approaches such as Fcube.

•

Substantial quantities of data on catches and effort by gear category have been compiled by Sub‐groups of STECF in recent years. These have been used to describe trends in catch and effort in relation to Cod recovery plans. The current SG reviewed the results of these STECF groups in relation to the possible involvement of ICES in such work. The SG concluded that the compilation of this database has represented a substantial achievement which represents the most successful attempt so far to describe recent trends in European mixed fisheries in an advisory context. However, the SG also felt that the utility of the data could be further improved by placing more emphasis on fleets and less on age data.

•

The SG concluded that SGMixMan should not continue as a methodological group because it has completed the task it was set up for. One or more regional groups should be formed whose tasks should include the preparation of detailed fishery descriptions that could form part of fishery advice. Such a group or groups could also run mixed‐fishery forecasts, and address specific requests as required, and could also be linked with other regional groups, e.g. on ecosystem descriptions.

•

To illustrate the context for, and benefits of the approaches it has developed, the SG prepared example advice sections for both the North Sea and Biscay case studies. These combine both the fishery description and the forecast aspects of its work.