Report of the Study Group on Survey Trawl Gear for the IBTS Western and Southern Areas (SGSTS)

This meeting of the Study Group on Survey Trawl Standardisation (SGSTS) was focussed on the planning for the publication of an ICES Cooperative Research Report on this subject. As such the main aims were to review the material collected thus far, and to identify any gaps in that material.The SG concluded that the material was better presented as two separate CRR. The first to be a generic survey trawl document addressing issues common to all or most survey otter trawls. The second would collate all the material on the GOV trawl, used in the IBTS survey. This trawl is relatively unique in being used in a multi-national survey where data are explicitly combined, and where standardization is particularly important.