Report of the Benchmark and Data Compilation Workshop for Flatfish (WKFLAT 2009)

WKFLAT  2009  is  the  second  benchmark  workshop  held  under  new  ACOM  proce‐dures for assessment review. The meeting was held at ICES HQ, Copenhagen, Den‐mark from 6–13 February 2009. The meeting was chaired by Tony Smith (Australia) and  the  ICES  Coordinator  was  Jan  Jaap  Poos  (Netherlands).  Mauricio  Ortiz  (USA)  and Jim Ianelli (USA) participated in the meeting as invited external experts. There were  16  participants  in  the  meeting  representing  seven  nations. The  main  objective  for the meeting was to review data inputs and assessment methods for several flatfish stocks in the North Sea and English Channel (IV plaice, VIId sole, VIIe sole) and to update Stock Annexes for these stocks (the recipes for conducting assessments to be applied  by  working  groups  over  the  next  three  to  five  years).  The  meeting  started  with a data workshop, to which stakeholders were invited to bring new data for con‐sideration for use in assessments. Four stakeholders attended the meeting‐two from the Netherlands, one from the UK and one from Belgium. The meeting agreed on a set of priority issues for each stock (related to data quality, data analysis, and assess‐ment methods). A subgroup was set up for each stock to address stock‐specific issues, with a daily plenary to report on and review progress, and to discuss generic issues. The full report of the meeting includes a set of generic issues identified during the workshop  and  associated  recommendations,  followed  by  detailed  stock‐specific  re‐ports  and  recommendations. A  key  output  of  the Workshop  was  an  updated  Stock Annex for each stock.