Second Interim Report of the Working Group on Target Classification (WGTC

The Working Group on Target Classification (WGTC) met in Nantes 23–24 May 2015 in Nantes, France. Rolf J Korneliussen, Norway, served as Chair. The number of ex-perts in the working group is currently 31, of which 23 met in Nantes. Ten presenta-tions were prepared prior to the meeting, each followed by discussions. The working group meeting convened prior to the ICES Symposium on “Marine Ecosystem Acous-tics – observing the ocean interior across scales in support of integrated management”. The WGTC Chair reported results of the work from WGTC to the Working Group on Fisheries Acoustic Science and Technology (WGFAST) in Nantes, France, on 29 May 2015.Acoustic data are currently being collected from a variety of acoustic systems in many countries to address a range of ecosystem monitoring and stock management objec-tives. There is no ICES CRR covering this topic, however, there are two CRR on adja-cent topics: CRR 238, Editor: Dave Reid, Echo Trace Classification; and a CRR286, Edited by John Anderson on Acoustic Seabed Classification. Note that the CRR 238 focused mostly on single-frequency and school-based methods, and that at the time, work on multifrequency and wideband methods (while covered in that CRR) was more in a development stage, but is now much more mature.