Report of the ICES/NSCFP Study Group on the Incorporation of Additional Information from the Fishing Industry into Fish Stock Assessments (SGFI)

The Study Group on Incorporation of Additional Information from the Fishing Industry into Fish Stock Assessments (SGFI) met for two days in The Hague, Netherlands. The participants consisted of fishers, their representatives, scientists employed by the industry, ICES scientists and an ICES representative. The national initiatives to improve the relationships between the fishery and fishery science were presented and discussed in detail. Outstanding were initiatives from Canada, where sentinel surveys are conducted together with the fishery. Very close cooperation was achieved also in surveying and harvesting in the Celtic Sea herring fishery and the Danish discard sampling in the Baltic Sea. As compared with the previous year the overall situation in cooperation has not improved. The relationships have, in a number of cases, become more difficult and information flow from the fishery to the fishery science rather decreased than increased. While this is obvious in a number of countries on the working level between the individual fisher and the scientist, it is, in general, not so much the case on the level of fishery representatives and fishery science.