Report of the Working Group on North Sea Cod and Plaice Egg Surveys in the North Sea (WGEGGS2)

The Working Group 2 on North Sea Cod and Plaice Egg Surveys in the North Sea (WGEGGS2) met in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, on 10 and 11 October 2017. Six partici-pants representing five different countries participated in the meeting, which was chaired by Matthias Kloppmann, Germany. The objectives of the meeting were to: a) Review results of the 2017 MIKey-M net surveys; b) Plan for the 2018 survey; c) Write the MIKey-M net survey manual; d) Prepare WGEGGS2 data for archiving in the ICES eggs and larvae database; and e) Review results on molecular identification of fish eggs.In 2017, sampling of fish eggs was undertaken by Norway, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, France and Scotland during the IBTS, using the MIKey-M net as recom-mended by WGEGGS2. The weather conditions from end of January to end of Febru-ary 2017 were better than in 2016, particularly in the north of the survey area. This resulted in a much better coverage with MIKey-M sampling. However, the lack of suf-ficient personnel resulted in a rather poor level of sample analysis. Many samples re-mained unprocessed while for other samples only simple egg counts are available. MIKey-M samples from the 2017 survey will be kept at the sampling institutes. For 2018, a full MIKey-M net survey with a complete sample analysis, including genetic identification where possible, is planned. For this survey, also Sweden will be invited to participate in order to cover Skagerrak and Kattegat. In preparation of this survey, the MIKey-M net survey manual, which is currently only part of the MIK manual, was finalized as a stand-alone version for publication in the ICES SISP series.