Report of the Working Group on the Assessment of New MOU Species (WGNEW)

The latest Memorandum of Understanding signed between the European Commission and ICES provides in its annex I a list of species in the ICES Fishing Area for which recurring advice may be requested by the Commission. In addition to the standard species for which advice has been requested within former agreements, a list of species was added under a paragraph "New species": Seabass, lemon sole, dab, flounder, turbot, brill, spurdog, skates and rays, gurnard, red mullet, lesser spotted dog fish and porbeagle. The Working Group on Elasmobranch Fishes [WGEF] has included the assessment of spurdog, skates and rays, lesser spotted dog fish and porbeagle in its TORs, and for the other species it was resolved at the Sept. 2004 ACFM meeting that :  
a Working Group on Assessment of New MoU Species  [WGNEW] (Co-Chairs: Henk Heessen, Netherlands and Jean-Claude Mahé, France) will meet at ICES Headquarters from 13-15 December 2005 to:

• consider possibilities for fish stock assessments of the following species: sea bass, flounder, common dab, lemon sole, brill, turbot, gurnards, red gurnards, and red mullet; through 1) review of knowledge on stock structure, 2) existing monitoring and abundance programmes including the EU Data Collecting programme, 3) existing databases useful for fish stocks assessment. The aim is to compile and publish the findings as a CR Report and as a database in CD form;
• evaluate the status of the stocks as appropriate on the basis of existing information.
• develop a strategy that will further enable appropriate future assessment of these species, separated into a number of biologically defined stocks.