This was the first interim year for the multi-annual Terms of References (ToRs) for the Re-gional Coordination Group North Atlantic and North Sea & Eastern Artic. The group met 3-6 June in Ghent, Belgium. The overall aim for RCGNA NS&EA is to review the status of current issues, achievements and developments of regional coordination and identify future needs in line with DCF requirements and the wider European environmental monitoring and management.
Six ToRs were handled during the RCG NA NS&EA 2019, all of which were intersessional carried out by designated ISSG , starting December 2018. 14 ISSGs were suggested for 2018-2019, all active during this period and all delivereing results before the RCG NA NS&EA 2019 technical meeting. The output of the ISSGs were extremely valuable for the work of the Technical meeting, and were the basis of the discussions at the meeting.
ToR 1 relating to the improvement of the alignment between data collection and end-user needs (by region) was progressed this year through the work of two sub-groups on feedback and interaction with the end user and the revision of the EUMAP 2020& beyond. The sub group on feedback with the end user had several skype meetings with selected members of the end-user group and one physical meeting hosted by ICES. Topics discussed were the ICES data calls, the upload logs, the surveys. For the future a further streamlining of the dialogue between end-users ans data providers is scheduled in order to identify effective processes to meet end-user needs and allow the RCG to prioritise its activity relating to future data collection, storage and transmission functions.
The Intersessional Group for the Revision of the EU-MAP met 6 – 8 May, 2019 and was at-tended by 19 participants from 14 Member States and one participants from the DG MARE. The modification to the current EU-MAP should be minimal, aimed at simplifying the re-quirements and the reference tables. The intersessional group proposed modification in the regulation to affirm that EU-MAP was not aimed at compensating the gaps and weaknesses of the control regulation provisions, especially regarding small vessels. It was proposed that an evaluation of recreational fisheries pilot studies should be done by STECF to support the need for further inclusion of recreational caught fish in stock assessments. Further, that mul-tispecies surveys on recreational fishery catches should only include volume in weight by species. RCG NA NS&EA suggests STECF to consider a workshop in September 2020 to re-view the impact of recreational fisheries based on the
ToR 2 relating to data quality in data quality collection, was progressed this year through the 3 intersessional subgroups working on fisheries overview, metier issues and data quality respecitvevly, as well as through the steering group and core group activities of the RDB(ES), output from fishPi2 work package 6 and the ICES data quality related expert groups PGDATA and WGBIOP. RDB data was used to produce regional fisheries and sampling overviews and the output was reviewed by the RCG to prepare for final approval and publication. The regional coordiantion of metier quality issues was progressed by setting up a common repository for all metier related documentation; agreeing reference lists and templates for methodologies and metier descriptions; scripting standard procedures and testing the effects of different approaches. The ISSG on data quality proposed data quality indicators based on Table 5a from the DCF annual reports and demosntrated how these can bw applied to track MS improvement on data quality procedures and to highlight common shortcomings on a regional scale or by data type. The time plan for the development of the RDB ES, its priorities and resourcing issues were presented and decisions proposed on how toprogress this critical work.
ToR 3 relating to impact on management measures on data collection, was progressed during this year through one intersessional sub-group on the implication on the landing obligation. The questionnaire Monitoring the impact of the landing obligation on data collection was amended and circulated in order to capture the practical issues and perceived concerns relating to the landing obligation in the North Atlantic, Baltic and North Sea. Overall, the findings were quite consistent across the three regions and relatively little change in comparison with 2017 was observed. RCG NANS & EA 2019 suggests the Pan-Regional Subgroup on the Landing obligation is suspended and will convene in a few years time to evaluate the implication of the landing obligation on national and regional catch sampling programmes and to make a full overview of methodologies in the estimation of refusal rates.
ToR 4 relating to the development and implementation of regional work plans was progressed this year through the work of three intersessional subgroups on the development of a draft regional work plan; a risk assessment for bycatch in the North Atlantic and working towards a regional sampling plan for the freezer trawler fleet exploiting pelagic fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic. It was agreed to select a number of basic building blocks for a regional work plan and conduct a test run to validate the process before October 2020. A risk assess-ment of bycatch was conducted for the North Atlantic based on methodologies developed in FishPi using risk scores updated in collaboration with WGBYC and sampling data from the most recent RDB data call. Next steps are to finetune the assessment and develop several regional pilot studies based on the highest risk. The north atlantic freezer trawler fleet was profiled and a data call issued to develop a statistically robust sampling scheme for pelagics caught by this fleet. Several workpackages under FishPi2 relate to regional sampling plans (2,3,4 and 5). The workpackage outputs were presented and the RCG agreed on how to in-corporate the results and recommendations into the RCG work and progress them interses-sionally.
ToR 5 relating to ways to improve the regional coordination and feedback on regional issues was progressed this year through the work of five intersessional subgroups on FishPi² project WP1 output; on the recreational fisheries; on diadromous fish; on aurvey task sharing and on Rules of procedures. The recent fishPi2 project (MARE/2016/22) identified the need for robust funding of central resources for RCG work to be effective and consistent. The project elaborated suggestions for a secretariat (to assure consistency and to reduce the burden on the chairs) and a webpage (to increase outreach) and suggested that the costs for such re-sources, as well as costs for development of the RDBES (regional database and estimation system) to meet future RCG needs, are something that need to be discussed between the NCs and the Commission. Depending on the decisions taken by NC in September 2020, it´s the responsibility of the RCG chairs to set up a plan for how to make progress in the direction and ambition of the decision within the suggested ISSG ‘Implementation of secretariat and webpage’.
The 2019 WGRFS meeting was held from the 10 – 14 June 2019, so was after the RCG NA NS&EAmeeting. As a result, it was not possible to provide a summary or feedback from the WGRFS. Instead, the activities and progress with marine recreational fisheries (MRF) since the previous RCG meeting was summarised. In addition, an update on the outcomes from the 2019 WGRFS will be provided in advance of the National Correspondents meeting in September 2019. For the Diadromous ISSG there was looked at how to develop and improve the development of regional sampling/work plans for diadromous fish and quality assurance of data. There were no proposals for recommendations and decisions available yet, this be-cause of the non-availability of the chair of the ISSG Diadromous Fish (clash of two meetings during the same week) to present them. The ISSG on surveys is suspended until the publica-tion of the revision of table 10. For the International Ecosystem Survey in the Nordic and the International Blue Whiting Survey, agreement were proposed.
Since 2017, both RCGs operated under their respective Rules of Procedures (ref both reports). The RoPs stem from a draft, pan-regional and uniform RoP, modified to the needs of each RCG. In case the merge of both RCGs is considered successful and to be continued, the RoPs of the merged group need to be (re-)established. The agreed RoP will be reviewed in 2020.
ToR 6 was to support the ToRs through the establishement and continuation of agreed in-tersessional subgroups with clear tasks mapped out for 2019 to 2021. The project FishPi2 sup-ported the ToRs through their outputs in 6 workpackages covering goverance, regional sam-pling plans, ecosystem considerations, small scale and recreational fisheries and data quality. In order to ensure that the project outputs are incorporated into the RCG work, tasks relating to fishPi2 are set for the RCG intersessional subgroups in their work programme.