Report of the Study Group on the Development of Fish Pots for Commercial Fisheries and Survey Purposes (SGPOT)

The Study Group on the Development of Fish Pots for Commercial Fisheries and Survey Purposes (SGPOT) held its third and final meeting in Ancona, Italy on 16–17 May 2009 prior to the WGFTFB meeting. The meeting was attended by 16 partici-pants representing 11 countries. The terms of reference for this meeting involved mainly the final planning of a Cooperative Research Report (CRR) from the group’s three-year work.The CRR will be edited by Bjarti Thomsen and Michael Pol and will include chapters on terminology, commercial and survey use of fish pots, historic and current fish pot research and dark side of pots (unaccounted mortality including ghost fishing and gear conflict etc.). The ‘meat’ of the report will be a chapter on future research needs to develop fish pots as a viable alternative to other gears and for survey purposes. The group agreed on a first draft deadline of 19 October 2009 and the final draft deadline of 18 February 2010. The editors expect the final draft to be handed to ICES one month later for publications. An ICES resolution has been prepared on an inter-nal publication of the CRR.