Report of the Study Group on North Sea Benthos Project 2000 (SGNSBP)

The Study Group on the North Sea Benthos Project 2000 (SGNSBP) met from 24–26 March 2003 at the Netherlands Institute for Fisheries research (RIVO), Yerseke, The Netherlands. Dr Rees (Chair) welcomed the participants listed at Annex 1, and recorded apologies from Sabine Cochrane (Norway) and Max Latuhihin (the Netherlands). The Study Group on the North Sea Benthos Project 2000 (SGNSBP) had evolved from an earlier sub-group of the ICES Benthos Ecology WG, following the support of ICES at the 2002 ASC. SGNSBP would report to the Marine Habitat Committee (with links to ACME and ACE), as well as to the ICES Benthos Ecology WG in order to exploit the opportunity for the reciprocal input of expert advice.

The primary purpose of the present meeting was to make progress with the initial compilation of data from several contributors and to conduct preliminary analyses using multivariate techniques. The meeting took the form of a Workshop, involving a sub-set of data contributors acting on behalf of all interested parties, who would be fully consulted on the outcome. Thus the purpose was not to draw any conclusions regarding the environmental significance of patterns in the data at this stage, but rather to facilitate these later objectives (see Section 3, below) by making further improvements to the data set.