Report of the Workshop for the Review of Eel Management Plan Progress Reports (WKEMP)

The Workshop for the Review of Eel Management Plan Progress Reports (WKEMP) held two meetings in 2018, 17–19 July and 13–16 November, both in Copenhagen, Den-mark. The chair of the Workshop also attended the first and last two days of WGEEL, 5–12 September in Gdańsk, Poland. WKEMP was chaired by Jean-Jacques Maguire, Canada. There was one participant from each of Canada and the UK (as chair of WGEEL) at the July meeting. These participants also attended the November meeting which an additional participant from the EU attended, see Annex 1 for list of participants.

WKEMP was convened to deliver solid estimates of stock parameters by Eel Management Unit that can be summed in terms of biomass and mortality, to reflect the state of the stock and exploitation status in Europe to answer a special request from the European Commission.

WKEMP approached this task by reviewing the national reports on implementation of Eel Management Plans which were requested by the EC in 2018 in line with Article 9 of the Eel Regulation 1100/2007. WKEMP also sought clarifications as necessary on these reports, and extracted and collated relevant biomass and mortality estimates. WKEMP also drew on information from WGEEL 2018 and previous technical and scientific reports to understand how estimates were calculated.

The report begins with an Introduction further elaborating on the mandate of WKEMP, the approach taken, and providing context. This is followed by sections on Methodol-ogy, Results, Discussion and WKEMP’s Recommendations. Annex 1 lists the partici-pants. Annex 2 summarises the methods used by countries to calculate biomass and mortality estimates. Annex 3 is WKEMP’s comments and questions on EMPs. Annex 4 is the reporting schedule to the EC. Annexes 5 and 6 review two issues of importance in the evaluation of compliance with the Eel Regulation (eels in transitional and coastal waters; density-dependence effects on the estimation of B0), evaluating possible short-comings and bias in current assessments, and proposing avenues for future work. Annex 7 defines the Acronyms used and provides a glossary. 

WKEMP found that, while several methods and data sources were used to estimate biomass and mortality, the results in terms of biomass per hectare fell within a relatively narrow range for most countries except B0 for France and B_current for Spain, whose values were much higher than those reported by other countries. It is also of note that reaching the target in several EMUs is based on stocking. It was not possible to provide mortality estimates that could be summed to reflect the state of impacts in Europe; available values for individual EMUs are presented and described.