Report of the Workshop on Scoping for Integrated Baltic Cod Assessment (WKSIBCA)

The ICES Workshop on Scoping for Integrated Baltic Cod Assessment (WKSIBCA), chaired by Marie Storr-Paulsen, Denmark, and Maciej Tomczak, Sweden, met in Gdy-nia, Poland, 1–3 October 2014 with 42 participants and six countries represented. The objective of WKSIBCA was to review data used in the single-stock assessment, to come up with a timeline for how to improve the assessment and to discuss how an integrated assessment could be implemented for the two Baltic cod stocks; the cod in SD 22–24 and cod in SD 25–32. Participants in the workshop were a large group with diverse background representing the industry, fisheries, NGOs, managers and scientists.
The single-stock analytic assessment of the eastern Baltic stock was not accepted by this year’s assessment working group (WGBFAS) due to severe problems with the in-put data. The advice for the eastern Baltic cod was, therefore, based on the ICES ap-proach for data-limited stocks. As an outcome ICES decided to establish a benchmark for both cod stocks and to scope an integrated assessment for the Baltic cod stocks. This meeting (WKSIBCA) was therefore meant to introduce the intercessional work con-ducted since the assessment working group in April 2014, and to reach some conclusions on how to proceed both in the short term (Benchmark in March 2015) and longer term (2–3 years).
It was recognized that four main issues had to be covered during this workshop. Alt-hough there was some overlap between the topics, it was decided to have subgroups on: 1) age and stock identification; 2) mortality and growth; 3) recruitment; and 4) on the process of integrated assessment and advice leading to ecosystem-based approach for fisheries management.
Presentations on the progress were made by scientists within these four main topics and on the 2nd and 3rd day of the workshop, four subgroups were formed based on the same topics listed above. In these groups, all participants were asked to produce a timetable with a detailed description on the work that has to be conducted, responsible person(s) and time of deliverable.