Report of the Workshop on Evaluation of Input data to Eastern Baltic Cod Assessment (WKIDEBCA)

The ICES Workshop on Evaluation of Input data to Eastern Baltic Cod Assessment (WKIDEBCA) met in Copenhagen, Denmark, 23–25 January 2018 (Chair: Michele Casini, Sweden), with 23 participants and 5 countries represented.
No analytical assessment has been produced by ICES for the Eastern Baltic stock since 2014 mainly due to lack of information about growth rates and natural mortality owing
to the deteriorating quality of age determination. The main aim of WKIDEBCA was to evaluate the new information about growth and natural mortality, including proxies,
that could be used in age/length based assessment models. Based on this evaluation, the objective of the WKIDEBCA was to decide whether the new available information  would allow to have a benchmark in 2019, with the aim to re-establish an analytical assessment for the stock. Another aim of the WKIDEBCA was to evaluate the best methodologies to construct the survey indices, including stock mixing, to be used in any stock assessment method.