Report of the Working Group on Fishery Systems (WGFS)

Two main issues were discussed at the 2009 meeting of the Working Group on Fish-ery Systems (WGFS): participatory modelling and ICES’ options concerning socio-economic advice. Experiences from research on participatory modelling relevant to water and river basin management and for fisheries management was presented and compared. A review on participatory modelling within water management provided useful categories for the purpose of participatory modelling, how stakeholders con-tribute and at what stage of the process the stakeholders are involved. The purpose of participatory modelling can be divided into improving management options and achieving collective learning and consensus-building on a complex problem. Stake-holders may have direct involvement by providing input to the model itself, either by framing the problem, i.e. defining the aim of the model, or by contributing with data or constructing the model, for example through influence diagrams. The more indirect roles of stakeholders would be at a later stage in the modelling process and can be divided into model evaluation and model use. Model evaluation is when stakeholders are asked to review the quality of the model’s design in relation to a policy issue, because models depend on assumptions and priorities of those doing the modelling. Stakeholders can be involved in model use by either running the model or interpret-ing the outputs, or by deciding how the model is run through suggestions on scenar-ios or management options. In the report, we have several examples of the latter, where stakeholders contribute in developing long-term management plans for certain fisheries, which performance is then evaluated by a simulation model. Only few ex-amples were presented on evaluating the quality of a model or on providing input to models.