Reports of the ICES Advisory Committee on Fishery Management, 1981

At the two Dialogue Meetings between representatives of the management authorities and ICES sCientists, clearer ideas emerged as to how the advice on fish stock management should be given in order to improve the usefulness of this advice to the management bodies.

The Biological Basis of the Management Ideally, the biological basis of the management advice should contain a full description of the present state of exploitation of each stock and an assessment of its general productive capacity. This is, however, not always possible in practice, although the methods necessary for this task are

available to the scientific community. The limiting factor is the amount and ~uality of the data available for assessment work. Reliable catch data are absolutely essential for any meaningful assessment. As has already been pointed out during the Dialogue Meetings, there was a deterioration in the reliability and ade~uacy of catch statistics over a wide area in recent years. If management want reliable, accurate scientific advice, they must take the necessary steps to ensure that the statistical data base is complete and accurate. Basic assessments of the state of a stock are usually carried out by the relevant ICES Working Groups, but the responsibility for the validity and precision of the assessments, within the constraints imposed by the data available, lies with ACFM. Consequently, the assessments are not approved by ICES before they have been scrutinized by ACFM.