WORKSHOP ON THE IBERIAN SARDINE MANAGEMENT AND RECOVERY PLAN (WKSARMP)

Abstract

The Workshop on the Iberian Sardine Management and Recovery Plan, chaired by Manuela Azevedo (Portugal), met in Lisbon, Portugal, 1–5 April 2019 to evaluate if the management and recovery strategies jointly proposed by the Portuguese and Spanish administration meet the client´s objective and are precautionary according to ICES precautionary criterion. The request also asked for the re-examination of the Biological Reference Points (BRPs) for the Iberian sardine stock. The working group decided to keep the current BRPs, Blim of 337.4 thousand tonnes and FMSY of 0.12year-1, corresponding to the scenario of medium stock productivity, because the updated estimates as well as the estimates from the analysis of the effect on the BRPs of the assessment retrospective showed that both were within confidence bounds (95%) of the current adopted reference points. The working group also estimated BRPs considering the recent low stock productivity to be in the period 2006–2017 as specified in the request. Blim_low was estimated to be 196.3 thousand tonnes and FMSY_low was estimated to be 0.032year-1, corresponding to the scenario of low stock productivity. The estimated BRPs were used to set the biomass and fishing mortality reference levels of the catch rules and also, following the ICES guidelines for the evaluation of management plans, the basis to compute performance statistics of the management strategy evaluation under each operating model