SEAwise Report on requirements for transparency and quality control

This report describes the common protocol for producing openly-available, quality assuring data and methods used in SEAwise. SEAwise data and methods are all data collected, processed, used or stored in connection with the SEAwise project. Making quality assured data openly available is a key priority in SEAwise in accordance with the FAIR principles: Ensuring that data are findable, openly accessible, interoperable and available for increased re-use. The processes in place to ensure this are described in this report.  This report shows the results of the SEAwise project. More information on the project can be found at https://seawiseproject.org/</p

SEAwise report on the effects of fishing on food webs and community diversity aimed at populating the MSFD Descriptor 4 and based on food web and end-to-end modelling.

The SEAwise project works to deliver a fully operational tool that will allow fishers, managers, and policy makers to easily apply Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) in their fisheries. This SEAwise report describes work that aims to provide a strong evidence base supporting the use of ecological indicators in fisheries management through statistical studies and end to end modelling. Our aim is to support the use of ecological indicators to guide managers towards strategies that lead to an ecologically safe space for fisheries, which we define as a range of states that provide yields for sustainable fisheries, maintains ecosystem functions and leads to low risk of overexploitation of species and loss of diversity. We show from an analysis of the past, using stock assessment model products for the northeast Atlantic and observations from scientific survey data of the North Sea, that fishing has already impacted ecosystems. Fishing on commercial fish stocks altered the balance of functional groups within the ecosystem of the northeast Atlantic, with depletions in the biomass of fish during the 1980s followed by stock rebuilding since the early 2000s, such that the biomasses of benthivorous fish and planktivorous fish are now much greater than that of piscivorous fish, which may be a sign of an improving ecosystem. Within the North Sea, fishing also appeared to have depleted the biomass of fish during the 1980s (particularly in the southern North Sea) and led to a change in the composition of species and the proportion of large individuals in the ecosystem (particularly in the northern North Sea).We use comparative ecosystem modelling, employing multiple model types, to investigate the response of foodweb and community diversity indicators under a range of fishing strategies. We consider ‘no fishing’ scenarios, under prevailing environmental conditions, as a measure of the unimpacted state of the ecosystem i.e., its carrying capacity. Our modelled unimpacted state is our ‘yardstick’ - a standard from which we can measure the impact on the ecosystem due to current levels of fishing in the current conditions. We propose that the depletion of species, the difference in biomass of each species from their unimpacted levels under prevailing environmental conditions, can provide a basis from which to evaluate the risk of loss across impacted groups within the ecosystem.We investigate if any of our selected food web and community indicators, including those used within the regional sea convention OSPAR, can support the use of assessment thresholds that may help managers reduce the risk of depletion of species or degradation of ecosystems by fishing. We explore management scenarios, linked to changes in levels of fishing impact due to current fisheries (so not favouring one type of fishing over another), to demonstrate how reducing or increasing activity levels will alter the risk of depletion of species and demonstrate how ecological indicators are expected to change given alterations in the structure of the ecosystem. We contrast these management scenarios to additional scenarios in which seabed-impacting gears only are restricted to avoid damage to habitats. This latter scenario promotes fishing on pelagic fish, such as herring and sprat, in the future and inhibits trawling for demersal fish such as sole, plaice and cod.In each model, we find clear predictable relationships between fishing mortality overall (averaged across all model groups) and the depletion risk within the ecosystem. The biomass of apex predators typically decreases as fishing mortality increases. Similarly, as the size-structure of demersal fish communities decreases, risk within the communities increase. In contrast, the balance of trophic guilds in the ecosystem and the Shannon diversity overall or by group respond in differing ways (increases and decreases with increased fishing) dependent on the type fishing strategies modelled. The indicator targets for recovery and risk-based limits proposed here will be explored further in WP6 of the project.Read more about the project at www.seawiseproject.org</p

SEAwise Report on scoping workshops

The SEAwise stakeholder integration aims to ensure that the key issues of relevance, current ecosystem status, potential management measures are identified and prioritised for further evaluation in the project and hence that the end results are relevant to the end users. This deliverable report describes the approach taken to identify the stakeholder community, stakeholder interests and responsibility and subsequently establish ecological and social system priorities. The SEAwise consultations in the first half year of the project had the specific aims to identify key stakeholders, build trust and common understanding between SEAwise scientists and these stakeholders, identify key issues of relevance for ecosystem based fisheries advice, current ecosystem status and potential management measures, identify priorities of these key issues and evaluate how this varies between consultation methods and regions. Stakeholders were contacted through the Mediterranean Advisory Council (MEDAC), Southwestern Waters Advisory Council (SWWAC), Northwestern Waters Advisory Council (NWWAC), North Sea Advisory Council (NSAC). Pelagic Advisory Council (PELAC) and Baltic Sea Advisory Council (BSAC). Scientists participating in the project completed the same exercises for comparison. The choice of consultation method was chosen to enhance equal influence of all participants by minimising the impact of the organising scientists’ expectations and emergent group dynamics on group results. Three different approaches were used (individual consultation: 79 contributors, individual consultation in a group environment: 106 contributors and group consultation: 106 contributors). In total, 2752 key issues were identified. Six issues were identified repeatedly across regions and participant groups: climate change, MPAs, windfarms, employment and small scale fisheries. The remaining words often were identified only by either SEAwise scientists or stakeholders and there were frequent instances where one of these group identified a word in the top 10 whereas the other group did not mention the word. The results highlight the importance of scoping the key topics beyond the scientists participating in the project and the need to consider consultation methods thoroughly. Moving forward in SEAwise, the individual scoping results will be used to identify issues which interested users may first search for and the workshop cloud scoping together with the individual scoping results to identify key topics for advice. The differences between SEAwise participant and stakeholder key topics will be used in the project to raise awareness of the need to talk to end users about the advice produced in advance. This report describes results of the SEAwise project. More information about the project can be found at https://seawiseproject.org/</p

SEAwise Data Management Plan

   This report describes the SEAwise data procedures and guidelines with the aim to increase the awareness about the data collected, processed and stored in the project, to ensure that all relevant data collected and used in the project is available in a well-documented, discoverable, standardised and easily accessible form, to give information on data quality and sampling protocols and, to clearly state the usage rights on the different data and to ensure use and handling of data is in accordance with Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR).  Sharing research knowledge and data is integral to the SEAwise project and this is attained through implementing the FAIR principles, employing dedicated quality assurance processes and carefully considering ethical aspects of knowledge and data storing and sharing. </p

SEAwise Report on effects of environmental and ecological factors on stock productivity for online tool

The SEAwise project works to deliver a fully operational tool that will allow fishers, managers, and policy makers to easily apply Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) in their fisheries. This SEAwise report aims to synthesise the results of population dynamic modelling tools used in a single species mode to demonstrate the effect of integrating the impact of environmental drivers on our perception of stock productivity, as well as the effect of different environmental scenarios, all other things being equal. At this stage, the stocks of interest have been parametrised in the different modelling tools (FLBEIA, BEMTOOL, BEE, SMS) and for each of them a baseline scenario, in which the productivity of the stock (weight/length at age, maturity and natural mortality) and the exploitation pattern (selectivity, discards) remain aligned to the stock assessment has been parametrized and run.Overall, the baseline runs presented here are considered to be realistic and consistent with perception of long-term stock productivity under current management and reference points. However, several stocks are currently in a benchmarking process and the baseline simulations conducted under this task will be updated in the future.Read more about the project at www.seawiseproject.org</p

SEAwise report on historic and future spatial distribution of fished stocks

This SEAwise report assesses the distribution of fish species across European seas. To this end, an ICES workshop, WKFISHDISH2, was co-organised to reach out to the broader scientific community and acquire as much knowledge as possible on scientific surveys and species distribution models. A large amount of historical scientific survey data, stored in the DATRAS and MEDITS databases, served as basis for the development of guidelines on how to appropriately pre-process such data, analyse them with state-of-the-art species distribution models (SDMs), and define metrics on how to compare species distributions. Distribution maps were generated separately for the Mediterranean Sea and the Northeast Atlantic spanning the Baltic Sea, North Sea, Celtic Seas, Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast.  In general, there was good agreement between the distributions generated by different models that were applied to four different reference species with different characteristics in terms of spatial distribution. Differences between models were mainly related to the configuration of spatiotemporal processes, and the extrapolation, mainly in areas with few observations, or where correlates extend to values outside the observed range.  Trends in species distribution were species specific. Some species have shifted in a northward direction, while the distribution of other species was static, or characterized by a southward trend. It is difficult to have a mechanistic understanding, e.g. migration due to climate change, local outbursts, and/or local depletion of fish stocks, of these changes based on survey data that does not allow tracking of individual fish. Potential climate related shifts were instead investigated by linking the survey data with oceanographic variables generated through coupled hydrodynamic-biochemical models. This allowed us to explore how species distributions may change under different scenarios of climate change.  More information about the SEAwise project can be found at www.seawiseproject.org</p

SEAwise Report on key drivers and impacts of changes in spatial distribution of fisheries and fished stocks

   An ecosystem approach to fisheries management requires the consideration of spatially explicit management measures and other impacts on species and the links between the distribution of fished species, their surrounding environment and productivity. Quantification of the spatial aspects of fisheries and ecology of commercially fished stocks may improve the accuracy of the predicted changes in fish productivity, fisheries yield and costs, benefits and selectivity.  To provide a knowledge base for spatially explicit considerations, SEAwise consulted stakeholders throughout Europe and conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature. As a first step, engagement with relevant stakeholder groups in each Case Study identified key issues of relevance to spatial management. The input from this stakeholder consultation was supplemented by a systematic literature review with careful consideration of the objectives, search terms, inclusion/exclusion criteria, the method for data/knowledge extraction and ultimately how these data and knowledge will be used. The purpose of the task was to quantify the key drivers and pressures behind the changes occurring in commercial fish stocks and fisheries distribution that have a spatially explicit content, map the relevant existing scientific knowledge and provide input to the subsequent SEAwise tasks.  The words identified by the stakeholders consulted focused on factors causing changes to the distribution of commercial fish/shellfish (climate change, MPAs, species interactions, pollution, habitats and invasive species) and fisheries (windfarms, MPAs, Marine spatial planning) as well as the other human impacts. The systematic review extracted data from 331 papers. The most frequently studied topic was the distribution of fish and the region with most papers was the North Sea with about the twice the amount of papers in each of the other regions. The most frequently studied species in the literature were cod, hake and plaice and by far the most frequently studied fisheries was demersal trawl fisheries.  Among the issues identified by stakeholders as key, the effects of environmental conditions on the distribution of fish were particularly well represented in the reviewed material. In contrast, factors determining the distribution of fisheries were almost exclusively studied in trawl fishing in the North Sea and papers on the effect of area restrictions on fish and fisheries were largely restricted to Western waters and the North Sea. While knowledge on the effects of habitats on species did exist, this was restricted to the Baltic Sea and North Sea and papers addressing this outside these areas were close to non-existent. This points to important areas for future work in SEAwise. This report describes part of the results of the SEAwise project. More information about the project can be found at https://seawiseproject.org/ </p

SEAwise Report on the key social and economic aspects of regional fisheries

Fishing is a human activity with various social and economic implications. In most countries, those implications are key factors to consider when deciding on specific management strategies. In this report, the fisheries management strategies implemented in the different European marine regions are reviewed, and relevant indicators, models and tools that can be used to predict the effectiveness of these strategies, from a social and economic point of view are identified. The objective was to identify the critical social and economic aspects of fisheries,  relevant social and economic indicators, and regionally‐relevant management measures to be considered in the evaluations of different management strategies later in the project.   The scoping consultations and systematic reviews identified a long list of potentially relevant key social and economic aspects and management measures. Among these, the most frequently mentioned items identified in scoping with stakeholders were windfarms, employment/jobs, MPAs, food supply, small-scale fisheries, local communities and pollution. The systematic review identified landings (volume or value), effort (days at sea), fuel costs, number of vessels, profit, aspects of costs, economic performance, sustainability-resilience, compliance and capacity as frequently occurring topics. The fisheries management policies most frequently mentioned were effort control, landing obligation, Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ), MPAs and TAC. Among the papers analyzed, more than 30%, concerned the Mediterranean region, followed by Western Waters, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, indicating a higher contribution of Mediterranean studies to the conclusions. Aspects identified frequently in both scoping and in systematic reviews included MPAs and small-scale fisheries, which were all identified in both methods as frequently occurring. However, there were also aspects which appeared to be represented differently in the evaluations (e.g. employment and local communities) indicating discrepancies between the available knowledge and that sought by the end users. The report describes results from the SEAwise project. More information can be found at https://seawiseproject.org/</p

SEAwise Report on the key species and habitats impacted by fishing

The implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management requires knowledge on the ecological impact of fishing activities on species and their habitats – those both targeted and not targeted by fisheries. To identify which ecological impacts are key and what is known about them, SEAwise consulted stakeholders through European Advisory Councils and conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature to map the available knowledge and evidence. Specific reference was given to the bycatch of Protected, Endangered and Threatened (PET) species, benthic habitats, food webs and biodiversity, and impact from fisheries-related litter and ghost nets.  At the stakeholder consultations, sharks and/or elasmobranchs, turtles, species interactions, and seals or marine mammals were identified as top ranked in at least three out of the five regions. Other terms identified by at least two Case Study regions were: seabirds, sensitive species, benthic habitats, litter, PET species, invasive species and species interactions.  Relevant data were extracted from 549 retained papers. The majority of studies were conducted in the Mediterranean Sea, whereas only few papers reported on fishing impacts in the Baltic Sea (see figure below). Bony fish (teleosts) and benthos were the most studied ecosystem components in all Case Study regions, whereas marine mammals and cartilaginous fish were often studied in relation to bycatch of PET species.  Out of the 549 papers, most of them were related to fishing impacts on food webs and biodiversity and benthic habitats, followed by bycatch of PET species and other fishing impact studies (not related to any task). Fewest studies were related to the impact of fisheries-related litter and ghost nets. Demersal trawls were by far the most studied gear in studies on commercial fishing impacts. For recreational fisheries, hooks and lines, in particular angling, was the most studied fishing activity.  Among the items identified by the stakeholders, marine mammals, seabirds and reptiles were all covered in at least 25 papers each, indicating that there is a considerable body of knowledge even though not all areas may have information for all species. Litter was the key item that was least frequently reported on in the literature, especially outside the Mediterranean, where scientific papers were rare. As a consequence, areas outside the Mediterranean may lack information for further analysis unless a dedicated effort is made in SEAwise to remedy this. The regional differences in topics identified by stakeholder scoping did not reflect the regional amount of papers available.  This report describes results of the SEAwise project. More information about the project can be found at https://seawiseproject.org/</p