ICES 2009 - Report of the planning on commercial catches, discards and biological sampling (PGCCDBS)

PGCCDBS is the ICES forum for planning and co-ordination of collec-tion of data for stock assessment purposes; it coordinates and initiates the develop-ment of methods and adopts sampling standards and guidelines. Many activities in this group are closely linked to the activities of the DCR, and DG MARE is a member of PGCCDBS to ensure coordination with the DCR activities. Stock assessment re-quires data covering the total removal from the fish stocks and the PG serves as a forum for coordination with non-EU member countries where appropriate. Since 2007, Mediterranean scientists have organised a Mediterranean Planning Group for Methodological Development (PGMED) to deal with specific sampling issues of this area. Although organised in an autonomous group, it was agreed among all scientists that the contact and cooperation between the Mediterranean area the ICES area should be promoted and maintained. The link between the two planning groups is maintained through: (i) the inclusion of each group's report as an annex of the oth-er; (ii) the organisation of parallel meetings; (iii) the organisation of joint plenary ses-sions for generic issues, and (iv) the organisation of joint workshops. Last year¿s recommendations and intersession work were reviewed. Most of them were concluded with success and those not concluded gave raise to developments carried out during this year. The intersession work was related to mixed species land-ings, and minimum sampling protocols for sampling length and for age calibration. An age readers forum is about to be established, and would be used as a ¿one stop shop¿ for all those involved in age reading. ICES Cooperative Research Reports should be written on the current status of age determination of a species (or group of species) after exchanges and workshops have been conducted. A Common Open Source Tool (COST) for assessing the accuracy of the biological data and parameters estimates collected for stock assessment purpose, and a WebGR project to develop a set of web services to support the organization and data analysis of calibration work-shops are among the methodological achievements discussed in the report. The Group reviewed reports from relevant Expert Groups with respect to recom-mendations addressed to PGCCDBS. As feedback mechanism from data users (mainly Assessment WGs) to the PG, 'data contact persons' were proposed with a set of tasks to report on data problems etc. PGCCDBS will act as an advisory group on the further development of InterCatch. InterCatch is a web-based system to ease the data handling for assessment purpose. PGCCDBS were strongly of the opinion that the improvement of InterCatch needs to be addressed with urgency. Recent changes in data collection (e.g. through the revised EU Data Collection Framework) were reviewed and the need for workshops was defined.

STRANSKY Christoph;  RAID Tiit; 

2009-10-28

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea

JRC55044