The ICES Workshop on Mixed Fisheries Fleets (WKMIXFLEET) brought together the expertise of mixed fisheries scientists and economists to address concerns raised by stakeholders, and is-sues identified by the ICES Working Group on Mixed Fisheries Advice, on the fleet definitions used to produce mixed fisheries advice.
The work undertaken by WKMIXFLEET included defining a new framework for fleet segmen-tation, applying this to new sources of mixed fisheries data (Regional Database and Estimation System - RDBES), identifying differences compared with the current approach and considering future data sources or changes to current data calls which may aid the implementation of the new framework.
The new framework builds fleets as groups of vessels of the same fleet segment (defined by main Fishing Technique and Vessel Length Category), on an ecoregion basis, and makes use of spatial information as well as data on gear choice, target species assemblages and catch compositions. By defining the initial segments at the Fishing Technique*Length Category level, the new frame-work increases the compatibility of mixed fisheries fleet segmentation with the Annual Economic Report segmentation. It thus offers the opportunity to extend the current advice to more inte-grated advice products that account for socio-economic issues related to technical interactions in some segments. Additionally, this approach defines fleets based on more homogeneous aggre-gates of vessels which, in turn, improves the characterization of fleet behaviour. Using clear and transparent definitions to build fleets that are easier to understand and communicate is expected to raise the salience of mixed fisheries advice products to stakeholders and advice requestors. Additionally, the new data fields and level of disaggregation provided through the RDBES data, highlight scope for developing new mixed fisheries analyses and advice. Though the RDBES data will be an adequate data source for implementing the new framework, several future da-tasets and knowledge, such as future RDBES data products and data on social aspects, were identified which would bring additional value to mixed fisheries advice if incorporated with the new framework.
Unfortunately, some data quality issues in this new RDBES dataset, discovered during the work-shop, prevent this framework from being implemented immediately. These issues also pre-vented a fully documented methodology from being developed. A necessary ecoregion appro-priation of the fleet definition was also underlined. Therefore, this work will be progressed by the ICES Working Group on Mixed Fisheries Methodology in coordination with the ICES Work-ing Group on Economics.