SCICOM Progress Report 2020

The ICES Science Committee continues to support ICES science to grow in scale, scope and impact. The general objectives of the Science Committee are to work with the ICES community and Secretariat to keep the ICES science programme dynamic, internation-ally relevant, and impactful; to ensure seamless links between science, data and advice; and to engage with scientists in ICES member countries and beyond by planning an annual cycle of meetings and workshops as well as the Annual Science Conference.2020 has been and still is a challenging year for everyone. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dominant effect on all aspects of daily life, and therefore also on how science in general, and the work of ICES expert groups has been carried out. Thanks to im-mense commitment and tireless work of the whole network, including all individual scientists and especially the Secretariat, the meeting activities and work continued, alt-hough in different ways than normally, and ICES was able to reach key achievementsIn July, the transition between the outgoing and the incoming SCICOM chair was or-ganised fully remotely and the new chair, Jörn Schmidt, took on his role in full on 1 August 2020.Notable activities in 2020 included (i) the establishment of the Steering Group on Data Science and Technology (DSTSG); (ii) a stronger focus on supporting expert groups, including support for online meetings; (iii) furthering the engagement of new scientists participating in the ICES community; (iv) an increased frequency and strategic empha-sis on science communication; (v) increasing the links between science and advice – a key product of which has been the recently released viewpoint on the effect of scrubber technology; and (vi) maintaining and developing international collaborations. These activities have taken place alongside the continued delivery of science outputs and publications by the expert groups.