The Workshop on Atlantic Sardine (WKSAR), chaired by Alexandra Silva (Portugal) and Lionel Pawlowski (France), met in Lisbon, 26–30 September to (i) review infor-mation on stock identification, connectivity and migrations of sardine within European Atlantic waters (Area 7 to Subdivision 9.a)and, (ii) collate, standardize and analyse survey, fishery and biological data collected in the region, (iii) propose scenarios of stock structure and dynamics and (iv) methods/models for stock assessment (ToRs, Annex 5).
There were 18 participants from the UK, France, Portugal and Spain, including one representative from PONG-PESCA (NGO, Portugal) and two chair-invited experts on genetics (Annex 1). A WebEx meeting was organized with stakeholders to facilitate their effective involvement in the benchmark process, clarifying what their role is, and to promote their contribution. To that purpose a questionnaire was written, translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese, and sent to stakeholders with questions regard-ing their perception of the various aspects of the Northern and Southern stocks, the fisheries, the monitoring and their management (Annex 2).
Information on stock identification, connectivity and migrations has been compiled in Section 3 to be reviewed by SIMWG.
The group agreed to set the deadline to compile final datasets (all) at 5th December in order for people to start running assessment in preparation for the ICES benchmark meeting in February 2017
