Report of the Working Group on Fish Ecology (WGFE)

In 2009, WGFE (Working Group on Fish Ecology, D. W. Kulka, Chair) met at ICES Headquarters from 26-30 October. Sixteen participants from eight countries (Annex 3) addressed six Terms of Reference (ToR – refer to Annex 1). The work of the group was accomplished by subgroups assigned to each ToR and the report is structured as a single chapter for each ToR. Below, the results linked to the Science Plan (Annex 2).ToR a (Science Plan links: 2, 3, 7, 8, 13)It was demonstrated that the Large Fish Indicator could be modelled using a subset of species from a full demersal assemblage, thus the LFI is not a true community in-dicator.A satisfactory fit to North Sea landings, recruits, stock biomass, population length distributions and diet data was achieved using FishSUMS, a length-structured mul-tispecies fish community model. Future work should incorporate recruitment vari-ability and environmental drivers.Work on recovery of the North Sea demersal fish community to the EcoQO (fish community target state indicative of health) used a size-based model to explore tradeoffs between fisheries and conservation objectives and examined how state indi-cators respond to fishing pressure. Future work could include the implementation of observation and process error into the modelling frameworks, spatial processes, comparisons across ecosystems and/or spatially distinct areas within ecosystems.