Report of the Workshop on Age Validation Studies of Gadoids (WKAVSG)

This workshop was initiated by PGCCDBS 2012. PGCCDBS was approached by the ICES Publications and Communications Group (PUBCOM) with a request for a Cooperative Research Report (CRR) aiming at providing guidelines for age validation studies. The objectives of the CRR are:

1. to compile existing information on ageing protocols, workshops and otolith exchanges and the recommendations issuing from these initiatives;
2. to review and compile existing knowledge of validation studies undertaken so far, compare methods and provide guidelines for good validation practice. 

The responsibility for organising and editing the CRR was placed in WKNARC. WKAVSG was thereafter initiated in order to compile available knowledge for gadoid species. The TOR’s a)-e) largely reflect the different paragraphs intended for the CRR. Consequently, the text found in this workshop report is to a large extent identical to the text in the CRR.
The only TOR not represented in the CRR is TOR f) aiming at ”initiating and designing an international cooperation project on validation methods”. In the present report, a first draft of a call text is presented.