Report of the Working Group on Modelling of Physical/Biological Interactions (WGPBI)

• Within the EuroGOOS area there are now 600 environmental (physical) timeseriesbeing reported in real time and 100 operational and pre-operational modelsreporting output in real time. The concept of real time data for real time use isbeing realized.• Operational estimates (annual) of the eutrophication status of the North Sea,Skagerrak, and Kattegat are being produced by an ensemble of ecosystemmodels. This is being extended to a joint status assessment with the Baltic.• To assess the importance of prey for larval fish, look at mortality rates not atgrowth rates. Larval fish seem to grow at close to maximal rates even when preyavailability is low.• Several groups are now coupling stage structured zooplankton models(representing a single species) to NPZ models. The developments are still in theearly stages but the results are encouraging. This is an important step towardsproviding prey fields for models of fish early life history models.