Report of the Working Group on Assessment of New MoU Species (WGNEW)

The Working Group on Assessment of New MoU Species [WGNEW] deals with several species for which ICES so far (with the exception of sea bass) has never provided management advice. The species concerned are: sea bass, flounder (except for the Baltic), common dab (except for the Baltic), lemon sole, brill (except for the Baltic), turbot (except  for  the  Baltic),  witch  flounder,  red  gurnard,  tub  gurnard,  grey  gurnard,  striped red mullet, and John dory. Two meetings have so far been held: the first one in 2005 and a second one in 2007. The main task of WGNEW is to provide information on general biology, stock ID, fisheries, survey data, biological sampling and pa‐rameters, stock trends and management.
WGNEW only worked by correspondence this year. Since only sea bass and striped red mullet are part of ongoing research programmes, this report only contains an up‐date of the information for these two species. For the other species the reader is referred to the two former reports of WGNEW (ICES 2006 and 2007).
To make significant progress WGNEW is of the opinion that it is essential that some funding is provided to make data available to WGNEW and to perform some analy‐ses of these data. One of the coming EU Calls for proposals will contain the request for a study of WGNEW species. This Call, already expected late 2007, has been delayed  however,  but  is  now  expected  to  be  published  in  August  2008.  Although WGNEW had hoped to be able to report on some first results, this study has yet to start.