Witch in Subarea IV (North Sea) and Divisions IIIa (Skagerrak–Kattegat) and VIId (Eastern Channel)

New data (landings and survey data) available for this stock do not change the perception of the stock. Therefore, the advice for this fishery in 2015 is the same as the advice for 2014: Based on the ICES approach for data limited stocks, ICES advisesthat landings should be no more than 1574tonnes. Discards are known to take place, but the data are insufficient to estimate a discard proportion that could be applied to give catch advice; therefore total catches cannot be calculated.

Management of lemon sole and witch under a combined species TAC prevents effective control of the single species exploitation rates and could potentially lead to the overexploitation of either species.