This meeting brought together managers, stakeholders, and scientists to identify future priorities for mixed fisheries advice and research. The key aim of the workshop were to establish a joint understanding of the current approach to mixed-fishery advice, review recent developments in mixed fisheries analysis and modelling, and identify key future challenges and drivers for future mixed fisheries advice given the changing policy landscape.
The workshop highlighted the breadth of research fields that mixed fisheries considerations syn-thesised and noted that as an increasingly central part of advice for annual fisheries management decisions, there was a need for national laboratories to prioritise funding to develop approaches to address the emerging management challenges and bring the different areas together. The im-portance of timely, clear advice supported by more detailed fleet disaggregated information so the interactions could be understood at the national and fleet level was also a clear message from managers.
Key challenges identified at the workshop included the operationalisation of MSY ranges to re-duce over-quota catches in mixed fisheries, scenario-based advice taking account of changing regulations (e.g., landing obligation rules in the EU), and consideration of technical measures (spatial or real-time closures and gear based selectivity improvements) in advice scenarios. Such approaches would ideally be extended for consideration in an MSE setting to evaluate long-term management plans.
There was also general support for supplementary advice that could take the form of more de-scriptive and less data intensive approaches. This supplementary advice would provide a greater understanding of how spatiotemporal changes in fishing patterns affect catch compositions, and how target fisheries affect bycatch and vulnerable species. This sort of information would com-plement TAC-based advice in tackling specific management challenges faced in reducing catches of a stock which required large reductions in catches but is caught as part of a mixed fishery.
It was agreed that further technical work should take place to progress the areas discussed dur-ing the workshop; this report should be considered the Chairs’ summary and synopsis of the workshop outcomes to take forward.