Poster.-- Iberian Symposium on Modeling and Assessment of Fishery Resources, 19-22 October, Vigo, SpainAlthough some cephalopods have had always commercial value and others started to increase in value in recent years, unlike European Atlantic stocks of many commercially important finfish and crustaceans, they are not routinely assessed and no specific management measures are applied to fleets catching cephalopods, with the exception of some regional harvest control rules for artisanal fleets. Among the species that has been gaining importance in landings is the horned octopus Eledone cirrhosa. This octopus represents an important bycatch for several North Spanish otter trawl fisheries, appearing in landings but also in discards. Like other cephalopods, E. cirrhosa is a short-lived and fast growing species, and previous studies showed that its abundance varies in relation to physical and environmental conditions.
As a first step towards its possible future inclusion in the ICES annual assessment system, a simple assessment model has been tested in the ICES Working Group on Cephalopod Fisheries and Life History (WGCEPH). The chosen model was SPICT (Surplus Production model in Continuous Time). Using landings and two abundance indices (from a commercial fleet and a scientific bottom trawl survey), preliminary results have been obtained. Overall, although the model converged and all the diagnostics were acceptable, the estimated parameters obtained very wide confidence intervals, suggesting that improvements in the model are needed. Further work, including testing other assessment models or selecting other tuning indices, will help in the assessment process for this speciesN
