Small scale, big deal: Sampling catches from European small-scale fisheries.

Small-scale fleets (SSF) are important components of many ICES fisheries and are receiving growing attention within the CFP-reform and Marine Spatial Planning initiatives. In order to assess the importance of SSF within Europe, 2015 ICES WGCATCH compiled descriptions and data (effort, catch and value) of SSF fishing in EU waters, using 2012 as reference year and categorizing fleets by vessel length. The compiled information covered 17 countries describing a range of scenarios, spanning from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean. The <10m and 10–12m vessels were ranked highest in importance in nearly all countries in terms of number of vessels and employment. They were generally involved in multi-gear and multi-species fisheries developing seasonal or part-time activities into coastal areas with generally more sensitive habitats as nursery grounds or spawning aggregations. SSF were also found to be important for several fisheries in terms of effort, value and landings, and to represent a significant share of some TAC-quota or catches of regulated species, even though their landings may be under-reported. Group members also described the way SSF are sampled and estimated in their countries. The wide diversity in methodologies used to sample and estimate the impacts of SSF creates challenges to harmonize and standardize data quality indicators across European countries. We put forward some best practice guidelines for sampling SSF and show that these will have to be adapted at regional level in order to encompass existing variability at fleet and fisheries level

Recreational sea fishing in Europe in a global contextParticipation rates, fishing effort, expenditure, and implications for monitoring and assessment

Marine recreational fishing (MRF) is a high-participation activity with large economic value and social benefits globally, and it impacts on some fish stocks. Although reporting MRF catches is a European Union legislative requirement, estimates are only available for some countries. Here, data on numbers of fishers, participation rates, days fished, expenditures, and catches of two widely targeted species were synthesized to provide European estimates of MRF and placed in the global context. Uncertainty assessment was not possible due to incomplete knowledge of error distributions; instead, a semi-quantitative bias assessment was made. There were an estimated 8.7 million European recreational sea fishers corresponding to a participation rate of 1.6%. An estimated 77.6 million days were fished, and expenditure was Euro5.9 billion annually. There were higher participation, numbers of fishers, days fished and expenditure in the Atlantic than the Mediterranean, but the Mediterranean estimates were generally less robust. Comparisons with other regions showed that European MRF participation rates and expenditure were in the mid-range, with higher participation in Oceania and the United States, higher expenditure in the United States, and lower participation and expenditure in South America and Africa. For both northern European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax, Moronidae) and western Baltic cod (Gadus morhua, Gadidae) stocks, MRF represented 27% of the total removals. This study highlights the importance of MRF and the need for bespoke, regular and statistically sound data collection to underpin European fisheries management. Solutions are proposed for future MRF data collection in Europe and other regions to support sustainable fisheries management.Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer; French Ministry of Fisheries Management; Greek National Data Collection Programme; European Commission, Data Collection Framework; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [MF1221, MF1230, MI001]; Norges Forskningsrad [267808]; State Department of Agriculture, Food Security and Fisheries Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania; Interreg IVa 2 Seas; Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs; European Fishery Fund; Government of Galicia [ED481B2014/034-0

Report of the Working Group on Commercial Catches (WGCATCH)

The Working Group on Commercial Catches (WGCATCH), chaired by Mike Arm- strong (UK) and Hans Gerritsen (Ireland), met in ICES HQ, Copenhagen, Denmark, 10–14 November 2014. The meeting was attended by 34 experts from 21 laboratories or organizations, covering 16 countries. Currently, an important task for WGCATCH is to improve and review sampling sur- vey designs for commercial fisheries, particularly those for estimating quantities and size or age compositions of landings and discards and providing data quality indica- tors. However, the scope of WGCATCH is broader than this, covering many other aspects of collection and analysis of data on fishing activities and catches. This will be end-user driven, and coordinated with the work of other ICES data EGs such as the Working Group on Biological Parameters (WGBIOP), the Planning Group on Data Needs for Assessments and Advice (PGDATA) and the Working Group on Recrea- tional Fisheries Surveys (WGRFS) to ensure synergy and efficiency. The report of the meeting commences with background information on the formation of WGCATCH and its overall role. The remainder of the report provides the out- comes for each of the Terms of Reference (ToRs) and responses to external requests, the proposed future work plan and the ToRs for the 2015 meeting. The group formed two large subgroups to deal with the two major terms of reference which are the development of guidelines for carrying out sampling of catches on shore and the provision of advice on adapting sampling programmes to deal with the landing obligation. In order to evaluate methods and develop guidelines for best practice in carrying out sampling of commercial sampling of commercial fish catches onshore, a question- naire was circulated before the meeting. This questionnaire was structured around guidelines developed by the ICES Workshop on Practical Implementation of Statisti- cally Sound Catch Sampling Programmes (WKPICS) for best practice at each stage of the sampling process, and asked for a description of current practices at each of these stages. Based on these questionnaires, common and specific problems were cata- logued and potential solutions were identified. At the same time, the discussion of the questionnaires provided a form of peer-review of the sampling designs and iden- tified where improvements could be made. WGCATCH provided guidelines for de- signing a sampling survey and summarized earlier guidelines provided by the 2010 Workshop on methods for merging métiers for fishery based sampling (WKMERGE) The other main subject addressed by WGCATCH concerns the provision of advice on adapting sampling protocols to deal with the impact of the introduction of the land- ing obligation, which will alter discarding practices and result in additional catego- ries of catch being landed. A second questionnaire was circulated before the meeting to allow the group to identify the fleets that will be affected and possible issues that are anticipated, as well as to propose solutions to adapt existing monitoring and sampling schemes and to quantify bias resulting from the introduction of this regula- tion. WGCATCH outlined a range of likely scenarios and the expected effects of these on fishery sampling programmes, and developed guidelines for adapting sam- pling schemes. The group also explored a range of analyses that could be conducted in order to quantify bias resulting from the introduction of the landing obligation. Finally a number of pilot studies/case studies were summarized, highlighting the practical issues involve

Communicating uncertainty in quota advice: the case for Confidence Interval Harvest Control Rules (CI-HCRs) for fisheries

Multi-annual management plans are important tactical arrangements to support upper-level marine resource policies in many countries. The newly reformed Common Fisheries Policy in the EU reiterates the role of management plans, supported by the development of harvest algorithms, commonly called Harvest Control Rules (HCR). Current HCRs for most commercially important fish stocks in Europe and Norway depend on point estimates of the size of the spawning stock biomass (SSB) and level of fishing mortality (F) to dictate the scientifically-recommended Total Allowable Catch (TAC). When annual TAC advice from the ICES Advisory Committee, for example, is based on a point estimate for SSB, the propagation of uncertainties (assessment models of varying complexity, variable data sources and variable degrees and structures of random and systematic errors) and subjective expert decisions is contained, at best, in an annex of the official ICES advice document. TAC advice given as an exact number (sometimes specified to the kilogram) often occurs when clients (who commission the advice, or ministerial or other government authority) expect more of science than science can deliver. We outline an alternative formulation of the HCR that reflects the knowledge base through confidence intervals (CIs) dictated by the quality of input-data data from multi-stage sample surveys and model uncertainties. Our CI-HCR determines the TAC advice given the range of SSB and F assessed and performed more robustly in face of uncertainties than the standard HCR formulation. The advantage of CI-HCR is that the advised quota will depend on the quality of the assessments. Also, the adequate level of monitoring for advice support can be determined based on what science can actually provide.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author