Report of the Working Group on Recreational Fisheries Surveys (WGRFS)

The ICES Working Group on Recreational Fishing Surveys (WGRFS) role is to summarize and quality assure recreational fishery data collected under the EU Data Collection Framework (DCF-EC 199/2008 and 2010/93/EU) and control regulations (EC 1224/2009), and provide advice for ICES on recreational fishing issues. As such, the WGRFS is a forum for planning and coordination of recreational fisheries data collection and sharing knowledge. In 2014, 31 scientists from 13 countries attended the WGRFS with the aim of sharing current national surveys, reviewing the use of recreational fishing data in stock assessments, evaluating the quality of national recreational catch sampling schemes, ensuring effective stakeholder engagement, exploring economic impact and valuation studies, and reviewing the potential to extrapolate mortality estimates from one fishery to another (Section 1).