Report of the Workshop on Fish condition (WKFICON)

The ICES workshop on fish condition (WKFICON) was held at the University of Girona (Girona, Spain) on 17 and 18 November 2016, and was chaired by Josep Lloret (University of Girona), Pierluigi Carbonara (Coispa, Italy) and Claire Saraux (Ifremer-Marbec, France). The workshop was attended by 16 participants from different countries (Spain, France, Italy, and Germany). The WKFICON workshop was aimed at opening up new directions in marine fish condition (FC) research with a potential impact on the assessment and management of exploited resources and marine ecosystems. It brought together marine scientists with different expertise in the field of fish condition (e.g. fish physiology, fisheries biology, fish reproduction, fish parasitism) to discuss, in a European context, the future research needs, and the necessity to integrate fish condition indicators to better manage fishery resources to safeguard the quantity and quality of marine resources. Participants discussed on recent advances in that field, the gaps in knowledge, the future research needs and the use of fish condition as indicator of population and marine ecosystem conditions. A major consideration of the workshop was how fish condition indices can be used as indicator of stock health and ecosystem status. This is especially important in the context of fish stock assessment but also of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which aims at defining indicators of the health of the seas and more particularly of exploited species. After introductory presentations by all participants, the workshop held plenary sessions to address four different topics: (1) State-of-the-art, (2) Methodological aspects (3) Application of condition indices in the assessment of marine resources and ecosystems and (4) Future research and monitoring.