Report of the Study Group on Ecosystem Effects of Fishing Activities

Highlights: a) analyze existing data on discards and offal to study temporal and spatial variations in the amounts that are produced by different fisheries and their utilization by, and effects on, different components of the system;b) evaluate methods of assessing impacts of groundfish fisheries on the benthic infauna and epifauna with particular reference to P/B related approaches;c) analyze existing survey data in terms of appropriate summary parameters for species assemblages, with a view to initiating a stm.ly of biodiversity and changes in community structure;d) consider the attributes that would be appropriate to define indicator species for the evaluation of long-term impacts of fishing in order to initiate a review of information on a variety of marine species that meet these attributes;e) develop a design and planning framework for establishing areas of appropriate size that are closed to all fishing in order to monitor the response of benthic communities in heavily fished areas and plan monitoring activities and process studies that could help understand the impacts of fisheries.