At present, fisheries advice provided by ICES and other advisory bodies is mainly based on results of operating and assessment models representing single-stocks of single species occupying a single-area. Those models often rely on a single sustainability pillar, the environment. To understand this paradigm, a literature review of articles on multi-area, multi-species, bioeconomic fisheries models and their combinations was undertaken. A survey of advice reports was carried out to analyse cases where those types of models were used as operational models to provide catch advice or to evaluate management strategies. The literature search included the keywords “multi-species”, “multi-area” and “bioeconomic” each combined with the terms “stock assessment models” or “fisheries management models”, in the title and abstract of peer-reviewed articles. For example, Scopus returned around 100 articles for searches including bioeconomic models and 40 for those including multi-species (40) since 2020. Articles including the term multi-area were few and published prior to 2019. Advice reports indicated that ICES, which assesses around 200 stocks, bioeconomic models were not used. One multi-species model was used indirectly given that estimates of predation mortality by the model were input in two single-species stock assessments. With respect to areas, one stock was assessed with a 2-area model while in another case, two models were used to assess two areas of the same stock, linked by migration. Starting from cases of success, we worked backwords to understand the need and motivation to progress to multi-/ models, to identify data and other resources required and to outline the main challenges faced in those cases. Finally, we present ongoing work to develop a multi-area model for sardine in the Bay and Biscay, Cantabrian Sea and Iberian coast and discuss the knowledge gaps, strengths and flaws of the model in comparison with single-area models currently used to provide advice in the region.

Alexandra A. Silva (PhD in Fisheries Science and Technology, Researcher at IPMA) coordinates the IPMA team on Stock Assessment and Ecosystem Research Methodologies. She is analternate member of the ICES Advisory Committee since 2017 and was the head of IPMA Division of Modelling and Management of Fisheries Resources in 2019-2020. She has experience on stock assessment, provision of scientific advice and stakeholder dialogue and has worked in several fisheries expert and advice groups of ICES, FAO and other international entities. Her research has focused on population biology and dynamics of small and medium pelagic species, within several national (SARDINHA2020, LIFE+ MARPRO) and international projects (PELASSES, SARDYN). Recently she became interested on ecosystem topics such as trophic interactions, interactions of fisheries with top predators and, ecosystem approach to fisheries management. She co-supervises MSc and PhD students and fellowships and published more than 100 research items, of which about 45 were scientific papers.

One of the main outcomes of the 2002 Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development was the decision to restore fish stocks to levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2020, a goal that was partially met. The first question that arises from this decision is how these levels capable of producing the RMS are measured. The concept that best fits this indicator is reproductive potential, which can be defined as the capacity of a population to produce viable eggs and larvae that are recruited to the population or the fishery. Traditionally, spawning stock biomass (SSB) has been the main used indicator of reproductive capacity, however, there are situations where it is not possible to use it (e.g. populations with limited data) and it can also be questioned for ignoring certain particularities of the populations, such as maternal effects that affect the quality or size of the eggs. In this paper we will review the historical trajectory of the use of measures of reproductive potential, we will analyze the current situation of their use in the organisms in charge of the evaluation of fishing resources and we will identify the future challenges that allow us to advance towards a better scientific advice for sustainable management of the fishing resources.

Santiago Cerviño, Ph.D. in Biological Sciences is currently the coordinator of the IEO assessment team in European waters ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea). He is also a Spanish alternate in ICES Advisory Committee (ACOM). He has been member of many international working groups related with fishery science. He has participated in research projects on fishing topics such as EU VI and VII FP (e.g. BECAUSE, UNCOVER, ECOKNOWS, MYFISH or MareFrame), he has been the coordinator of the Spanish PN project IMPRESS and now is working on the Math4fish and Fishclim Spanish projects financed by NextGeneration EU funds. The research activity in these projects is focused on the development of assessment to support the sustainability and management of fisheries resources. Their main lines of research are focused on assessment methods, the integration of biological and environmental processes in the assessment, the uncertainty in scientific advice, or the evaluation of management strategies.

The management of the Bay of Biscay anchovy exemplifies the difficulties of managing short lived resources, subject to strong interannual fluctuations under a limited knowledge of recruitment strength, and the difficulties of managing an international fishery shared between two countries. A constant TAC regime (around 33000 t) ended up with a fishery crash and closure from 2005 to 2009, after a series of consecutive low recruitments. Earlier scientific precautionary advices were disregarded due to their inability to predict the size of the managed population during the first half of the year when the major fishery takes place. The crash triggered the EU to develop a long-term management plan in 2008. In the absence of a reliable recruitment indicator, biological risk was minimized through a close coupling between assessment, advice and management, changing the management year to start just after the spring surveys on adults. A second major improvement arrived in 2014 by the incorporation of an early indicator on recruitment from an autumn acoustic survey on juveniles. This allowed additional exploitation of the resource at similar risk levels and TACs are nowadays set after the recruit survey on a management calendar year basis. The interactive collaboration between fishers, scientists, and managers allowed inclusion of the stakeholders’ preferences for a biomass-based catch bounded harvest strategy suitable for these small valuable fisheries. This strategy allows catches between a minimum and maximum TAC level, to account for an economically viable minimum activity when approaching a minimum biomass threshold level, and for the limited market absorption capacity when exceeding an upper biomass threshold level, respectively. Such strategy was adopted by consensus and supposed a successful participatory process in fishery management. Since the recovery of the stock in 2010, the agreed harvest strategy has been successfully applied and the resource remains at a healthy status.

Andrés Uriarte (PhD in Biology, Principal Researcher at AZTI). With more than 35 years of experience, he has been responsible of the scientific monitoring of pelagic fisheries of the Basque country since 1987. His expertise covers fishery monitoring programs, direct surveying, biology (growth and reproduction) and integrated assessment and management of pelagic fish resources, having contributed to, or leaded several international projects on these subjects. He contributed to the implementation of the Daily Egg Production Method (DEPM) to the Bay of Biscay anchovy, and he has cooperated with European Commission STECF in the development of the original (2008) and revised (2014) anchovy management plans. In recent years he has participated in the evaluation of management strategies for the Iberian and Bay of Biscay sardine populations. As expert on pelagic fish resources he has participated and chaired several advisory working groups in ICES and for GCFM (FAO) and has been co-convenor of several international workshops. He has about 95 papers or written contributions, of which about 60 are chapters of books or Articles (SCI journals).

The use of Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) to support fisheries decision-making is increasing worldwide. MSE fits well within the advisory process, providing stability and consistency with long-term management objectives. If successfully implemented, it allows understanding and assessing the consequences of management options, makes trade-offs explicit, identifies strategies that work reasonably well in good times and bad, and balances competing objectives. MSE practitioners have defined a continuum based on the degree of stakeholder and analyst participation required, ranging from desk MSEs to full MSEs. Reflecting on the plurality of approaches and the readiness of scientists, managers and industry to participate in MSE contributes to the effectiveness of the process.

Marta Ballesteros works at the CETMAR Fisheries Socioeconomic Department. She has facilitated multi-level, multi-national stakeholders’ platforms in the European Union (e.g. MAREFRAME project), stakeholders dialogues at ICES (e.g. Workshop on scoping stakeholders on production of operational guidance on assessment of benthic pressure and impact from bottom fishing) as well as high-level policy dialogues (e.g. DG-MARE, ICES, STECF round table for implementing an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management). Research topics include governance, stakeholders’ interaction, fisheries policy and management. Recently, she has participated in the STECF report on the Social data in the EU fisheries sector (2022), co-chaired the ICES Workshop on Implementation of Stakeholder Engagement Strategy (WKSTIMP, 2023), the European Workshop on Science-Industry Research Collaboration (2021), and the Socioeconomic Subgroup of the Technical Expert Group on Data for Marine Spatial Planning (2021-2023) and is convenor of the Theme Session “Putting more science in: stakeholder engagement in marine research and policy processes” (ICES ASC, 2023). She is member of the ICES Working Group on Balancing Economic, Social and Ecological Objectives (WGBESEO) and Social Indicators (WGSOCIAL).

In Chile, the implementation of management strategy evaluation (MSE) began with a dialogue between decision-makers, stock assessors, and academia. The dialogue was set under two premises of the MSE approach, i.e., a) to identify and quantify the uncertainty associated with stock assessment procedures; b) to evaluate the performance of management procedures to achieve management objectives. Based on these premises, this contribution aims to evaluate the progress, commitments, and instances of participation in the implementation of MSE in Chilean fisheries. One of the critical aspects identified was a low number of stock assessors trained in simulation-estimation processes and implementation of operational models. The most significant advances have been specific and developed by implementing research and technical assistance projects, allowing stakeholders to participate. In small pelagic fish such as common sardine and anchoveta, biological reference points have been evaluated concerning the uncertainty associated with recruitment variability, the impact on dependent predators, and the structuring of the trophic web. In pelagic fish such as pomfret (Brama australis), data-limited stock assessment methods (only-catch data) have been evaluated considering uncertainty in population dynamics. The emphasis in the application of SSM has been on the diagnosis of stock status. Although harvest control rules (HCR) scenarios are proposed in the cases analyzed, either model-based or data-based, the stakeholder engagement has been restricted to Management Committees. It is identified that the most significant challenge for the operational implementation of MSE in Chile is in capacity building and promoting the establishment of HCR.

Dr. Luis Cubillos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Oceanography, Faculty of Natural Science and Oceanography, University of Concepción, Chile. In addition, he is an associated researcher at the Centre for Oceanographic Research in the eastern South Pacific COPAS-COASTAL (https://copas-coastal.cl). In Chile, his research focused on the life history of fish, spawning dynamics, assessment of marine populations, and the influence of environmental factors on fishery productivity and its relationship with environmental variability in small pelagic and demersal fishes. He authored/co-authored about 89 documents and guided more than 20 Fisheries Science Master students.

Including  spatial complexity in stock assessment and fisheries management

Spatial heterogeneity plays a pivotal role in comprehending and managing  natural resources, particularly in the stock assessment field.  Traditional approaches to stock assessment often oversimplify ecosystems  by assuming homogeneity across habitats, overlooking the inherent  variability and complexity that exist across different regions. In this session, key  components particularly relevant in the context of spatially explicit  stock assessment will be discussed, such as the importance of grasping  the spatial distribution of a stock, the more recent approaches in the  development of spatially explicit models, and the challenges associated  with defininig different management units. By gaining a more  comprehensive knowledge of these aspects, managers and scientists  can understand stock dynamics better, identify spatially targeted management  actions, and support sustainable fisheries management practices in a  spatially heterogeneous environment.

The importance of incorporating spatial structure into models of population dynamics and the resulting management decisions for many fisheries resources is now widely recognized. Particularly during the last two decades, the expanding field of spatial ecology has demonstrated the importance of population spatial structure for its role in regulating population productivity, leading to a growing awareness of the need to incorporate spatial processes in the population assessment and management interface. In fact, today spatial analyzes represent a cornerstone in contemporary fisheries modeling and are being explored in stock assessment, also largely due to the increasing availability of spatially explicit data, advances in statistical techniques, and the power of calculation. In addition, different scientific workshops have been dedicated internationally to review spatial modeling techniques and define best practices on how to incorporate spatial structure into stock assessment analysis. This talk traces the historical development of best practices and the evolution of the spatial stock assessment modeling techniques.

Marine biologist, with a master’s degree in biostatistics and a doctorate in mathematics and statistics. She currently working at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography in the Fisheries Department. Her main fields of research are spatial-temporal modeling and biostatistics in general to advise effective fisheries management. She has studied different fisheries (industrial and small-scale/artisanal) and various ecosystems (Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and Brazilian coastal areas), working at different spatial (from local to global) and temporal scales. Recently, she has also been interested in linking social and economic factors within the framework of species distribution models to understand how they might affect the distribution of species.

A key assumption in most stock assessments is that the area to be assessed contains a single homogeneous stock. The misspecification of the stock spatial boundaries in an assessment model can have unintended consequences for the model fit and prevent sustainable exploitation of the resource. Historically, once stock boundaries are adopted, decision-makers tend not to accept changes unless there are multiple and different studies that strongly support another stock definition. The available information about the spatial structure is reviewed and the suitability of the current stock boundaries is discussed for six fish stocks in the Bay of Biscay and the Iberian coast ecoregion. The analysis indicated that the assumption that the Capbreton Canyon is a geographical barrier that separates demersal stocks is not valid. Furthermore, the European hake and white anglerfish populations in Northeast Atlantic could be considered panmictic populations, although with a more complex spatial structure that must be evaluated before adopting a new stock structure. For the European anchovy in ICES division 9.a, a fine-scale spatial structure seems to exist, which requires further genetic studies to properly define it.

(from working paper “Review of fish stock boundaries using existing knowledge. Six examples from the Bay of Biscay and Iberian coast” by M.P. Sampedro, A. Iriondo, E. Abad, H. Gerritsen, A. Urtizberea, T. Moura, D. García, S. Cerviño, M. Pérez, I. Riveiro, A.A. Silva, L. Wise, M. M. Rincón, F. Ramos, N. Rodríguez-Ezpeleta, S. Garrido and M. G. Pennino)

Researcher at Centro Oceanográfico de A Coruña, Ph.D. in Biological Sciences (Universidade de A Coruña, 2001). As a PhD student, she carried out studies on the biology and behaviour of commercial crustaceans. She was also involved in the development of the management measures for artisanal fisheries and the inclusion of the fishers’ knowledge in the study of crustacean populations. In 2000, she was contracted by the IEO to optimize the fisheries sampling design and to calculate uncertainty in fisheries data and biological information, participating in developing of several software tools to facilitate these calculations: CASA, Lejboot, INBIO, and COST. Since 2006, she was involved in ICES stock assessment working groups, being the stock coordinator of Iberian white anglerfish and Bay of Biscay pollack, and also participated in the assessment of the eastern bluefin tuna stock. She is member of Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF), attending to their Plenaries and Expert Groups.

Fish stock assessment models are essential for managing fish stocks and implementing effective conservation strategies. Incorporating spatial structure into these models can be crucial for capturing the distribution, abundance and exploitation patterns of large stocks and highly mobile species such as yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) in the Indian Ocean. This study is part of the Spatial Assessment Modelling Workshop organised by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They simulated and provided a dataset on yellowfin tuna, for which different teams had to fit spatial stock assessment models in different platforms (e.g. SS, GADGET, CASAL, etc). In our case, we compared the performance of two stock assessment model configurations: a single-area model and a four-area model using the Stock Synthesis software. The single-area model assumed spatial homogeneity and treated the entire study region as a single entity. In contrast, the four-area model divided the region into distinct zones, considering the potential heterogeneity of fish abundance, movements and fishing pressure. Important steps in the modelling process are discussed, such as the standardisation of a spatial index of catch per unit effort (CPUE), selectivity adjustments of fishing fleets, recruitment settlements, tagging data and movement definitions. By analysing each of the model configurations, the study provided valuable insights into the impact of spatial structure on model performance. In addition, participation in the workshop facilitated productive discussions with other research groups and led to the development of general guidelines that may be key to effectively incorporating spatial considerations into assessment models.

Marine scientist interested in statistics applied to population ecology and conservation. He holds a degree in Marine Sciences from the University of Alicante and a Master’s degree in Biostatistics from the University of Valencia. His research ranges from spatio-temporal modelling of species distribution (SDM), especially through Bayesian statistics, to population assessment models. Francisco is currently a PhD student at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO-CSIC) in Vigo. His thesis focuses on the question «is it worth increasing the complexity of stock assessment models?» through different aspects such as sex separation or spatially structured processes.

The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) manages fisheries in waters outside national jurisdictions in the Northwest Atlantic. Since 2007 NAFO has been developing and implementing its Roadmap towards an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM). The Roadmap provides a good example of the inherently spatial foundations of ecosystem approaches. By definition, natural ecosystems are places. They have boundaries that, while often fuzzy, allow defining the physical space within which the marine productivity, including the stocks under exploitation, is being generated. This type of concept underpins the definition of Ecosystem Production Units (EPUs) to summarize ecosystem status and trends, and to estimate the production that can be sustainably extracted at the ecosystem level in the form of a Total Catch Index (TCI). Comparisons of aggregated catches against TCIs have shown that exceeding the 2*TCI level leads to ecosystem declines, so NAFO has adopted 2*TCI as an ecosystem reference point to inform its management processes on the risk of ecosystem overfishing. Another important spatially-explicit component of the Roadmap is the identification and delineation of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs). Unlike EPUs, which encompass an entire functional ecosystem, VMEs are more spatially constrained and often defined by high concentrations of habitat-forming corals and/or sponges. Understanding the spatial overlap and interactions with fishing operations is key for the evaluation of significant adverse impacts on VMEs from fishing, and to define area-based management measures to minimize these impacts (e.g. fisheries closures). Furthermore, spatially-explicit modelling is an essential tool to evaluate the effectiveness of these management measures. These examples highlight how spatial considerations and analyses are being used in the implementation of EAFM, but more importantly, they indicate that many issues of relevance for fisheries management are spatial in nature, and hence, ecosystem approaches need to be designed with these spatial dimensions in mind to be effective.

Marine ecologist and fisheries scientist. His research interests include predator-prey and food web dynamics, marine community ecology, and ecosystem-based management. He joined Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) in 2002, where he has been trying to understand the interactions among top marine predators, their prey, benthic habitats, the ocean climate, and fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic. He has contributed to stock-assessments and the development and implementation of ecosystem approaches to fisheries management at DFO, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO). Mariano did postdoctoral research (2000-2002) at the University of Guelph, Canada, and holds a PhD in Biology (1999) from the University of Buenos Aires, and a Licentiate in Biology (1993) from the University of Patagonia, both in Argentina.

Worldwide cephalopods fisheries are an important resource, both for industrial and artisanal fisheries. From a taxonomic point of view, more than 95% of their catches are made on four families (Ommastrephidae, Loliginidae, Sepiidae and Octopodidae), being Ommastrephidae the most important family with a 65% of the total catches in the present century. From spatial point of view, there are important fisheries in the three large oceans (Pacific, Indian and Atlantic, including the Mediterranean Sea), but in Pacific Ocean is landed about 69% of the total.

From a specific point of view, the ommastrephidae Dosidicus gigas, Illex argentinus and Todarodes pacificus are the ones with the highest catches. Within the sepiidae, Sepia officinalis and Sepia pharaonis have the highest catches. Among the loliginidae, Loligo opalescens and Loligo reynaudii stand out over the rest, and finally, in the Octopodidae, the species Octopus vulgaris and Octopus maya are the ones with the highest catches.

A common biological characteristic for most of the cephalopod species is their short life cycle, being highly opportunistic specie. This peculiarity makes the biomasses of their populations highly dependent on annual recruitment, suffering great variations between different years. All this makes it difficult to apply the evaluation models in use.

In the ICES Working Group on Cephalopod Fisheries and Life History (WGCEPH), different approaches have been carried out for the evaluation of these resources, using from the application of dynamic production models, depletion models adapted to these resources or studies of relationships with environmental parameters and their abundances.

Graduated in Biological Sciences from the University of Seville (1980). He obtained his PhD in the University of Seville in 1993. Since 1981 he has been developing his research work at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO). His professional experience focuses on the study and evaluation of the fishing resources that develop in Eastern Central Atlantic (CECAF) as well as the Gulf of Cádiz (ICES), contemplating those about biological studies of the exploited species (Fish, Crustaceans and Cephalopods) as their assessment. He has participated, as a scientific advisor, in various meetings of fishing agreements between the EU-Mauritania, EU-Mozambique and EU-Morocco, as well as in the Joint Scientific Committee for the fishing agreements between the European Union and Morocco, Mauritania and Guinea Bissau. He is currently the president of the EU-Bissau Joint Scientific Committee. He has participated in different cephalopod resource assessment working groups of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).

During these years he has participated in numerous research projects as a coordinator or participant both within the framework of the European Union and in national or regional programs. He has conducted more than 55 research surveys in oceanographic vessels is to assessment of demersal resources, both in the Gulf of Cadiz and in areas of the African Atlantic and Indian oceans (Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique).

In 2018 he has obtained the professional category of Research Professor. He has published more than 80 scientific articles as well as supervised a total of 8 PhD thesis

Crustacean species have particular life cycles and some biological characteristics which hamper the assessment of their stocks. Unlike the Teleost species, crustaceans do not have hard structures that can be used for direct ageing and growth parameters estimation. Different assessment models have been applied to crustacean stocks, making use of fishery dependent data (catch, effort and size composition of catches) as well as independent data (e.g., total abundance estimates or abundance indices from surveys), with different levels of information and model complexity. Some of the assessment models used in European and world crustacean stocks are presented and discussed.

She is  a fisheries researcher (MSc in Mathematics applied to Biological Sciences and a post-graduation in Fisheries Management) that have been working at IPMA in the last 20 years. Her research is focused on biology and stock assessment of deepwater crustacean species, sampling design, and, characterization and spatial effort estimation of demersal trawl fisheries and metiers. She was member of several ICES stock assessment and survey related Working Groups, chair of WGBIE (2020-2022) and ACOM alternate since 2014. She participated as invited expert in STECF EWGs for the Evaluation of Fishing Effort Regimes in European Waters, Management Plans Evaluation and for the analysis of Fisheries Dependent Information. She has participated in several EU funded international and regional research projects aiming to improve the management of fisheries and of fishery resources.

Elasmobranchs, a diverse group of cartilaginous fishes that include sharks, rays, and skates, play a crucial ecological role in marine ecosystems. Most of the species of this group are highly vulnerable to human pressures, mainly because of their conservative life history traits: slow growing, long-lived, late maturing, and low fecundity. The high vulnerability of elasmobranchs, together with the limited information commonly available for them, makes the assessment of the exploitation status of their populations and the subsequent scientific advice for their management, a great challenge for fishery biologists. In effect, the assessment of elasmobranch population status is severely impaired by the lack of biological information, as well as, on fisheries data. Long-term time series of catch and effort data are seldom available at the species level. Recently, adequate abundance/biomass estimators for stocks with low-quality data (poor data) or limited data (data poor) have been developed. The use of these tools together with a good understanding of elasmobranch population dynamics and of their fisheries will contribute to the achievement of healthy populations and the preservation the biodiversity and the ecological balance of our oceans.

Ivone is the head Director of Sea and Marine resources Department Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) in Lisbon, Portugal. Her background is in fisheries biology and ecology of deep-water species and elasmobranchs, data-limited stock assessment, and the management of fisheries at national and regional level. More recently, she works closely with government departments and stakeholders to communicate the advice and to ensure that the scientific advice, underpinning data and evidence address their needs.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) plays a pivotal role in managing the sustainable exploitation of marine resources, particularly focusing on tuna and tuna-like species such as swordfish and sharks. The successful management of these species necessitates a comprehensive understanding of their population dynamics, requiring robust stock assessment methodologies. However, the distinctive characteristics of these large pelagic migrators in the Atlantic Ocean pose several challenges to the assessment process. In this session, stock assessment protocols will be critically discussed, together with the considerations adopted by ICCAT, aiming to elucidate the implications of these unique species’ specificities on the assessment process.

Graduated in Mathematical Sciences and PhD in Statistical Methods from the Autonomous University of Madrid. After defending her doctoral thesis in 1994, she carried out research stays and later became a tenured professor of Statistics at various universities in Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. During her years at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), she established a relationship with scientists from the IEO, an organization in which she obtained a position as a senior researcher in 2006. In the period 2006-2011 she was assigned to the IEO in Vigo, working on the stock assessment of commercial species (cod, rooster and hake) in ICES and NAFO areas. Between 2012 and 2017 she held the position of vice-president of the Advisory Committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). She is currently  working on modelling of fishery resources for The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

Introducing socio-economic components in fisheries management using bioeconomic models

Integrating economics into fisheries management is increasingly recognized as crucial to foster fishery policy effectiveness. In this context, bioeconomic models may constitute a particularly useful tool. In fact, while earlier literature on this field focused on theoretical analysis resorting to oversimplified growth population models, a new fishery economics literature has recently consolidated itself in the field. That literature uses more complex population dynamics, namely age-structured bioeconomic models, and is usually applied to case-specific studies, thus contributing to bridging the gap between ecology and economics. In a context where fishery policies have been supported mainly by concepts and insights originating in the natural sciences, using bioeconomic models in the design of fishery policies still raises several challenges. We briefly discuss some of the critical aspects for the policy-oriented use of bioeconomic models and advance some suggestions for promising research avenues.

Assistant Professor in Economics at FEUC. He graduated in Economics at Nova SBE where he also obtained his PhD in the field of Environmental Economics. His research interests focus on renewable resources and ecosystem services with a particular emphasis on multidisciplinary bio-economic modelling. To date, he participated as a principal investigator, work package leader or as a member of the research team, in several research projects, having supervised the work of various young researchers. His research has been presented at over 20 international conferences, and he has had been an invited speaker in various universities seminars and workshops. His research has been published in top field journals, such as Ecological Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He is a member of two expert groups of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). He was a member of the board of director for the Spanish-Portuguese Association of Natural Resource and Environmental Economics (AERNA) and has been invited to integrate the scientific committee of various international conferences.

83% of the catches (averages) between 2011 and 2018 come from taxonomic groups and/or fishing areas of which we have a high level of ignorance of their status. To reduce this lack of knowledge, we present a method that jointly estimates all the exploitation rates of the catches in those well-known areas of the ocean to obtain an estimator that allows estimating biomass from the catches in the areas and/or groups. taxonomy of which we are largely ignorant.

PhD in Economics, he works at the University of Vigo where he teaches Economic Theory. In recent years his research has been oriented towards the design of global approaches.

The populations of small pelagic fish are highly susceptible to the impacts of climate change, which can disrupt their reproductive cycles, growth rates, and distribution patterns. Consequently, fishing fleets targeting these fish species must adapt their fishing strategies to account for the spatial and temporal changes in their target species. Compounding this challenge is the recent energy crisis, which has led to a significant increase in marine diesel costs that are not always directly translated to the first sales prices of the landings. This exacerbates the economic effects of climate change on the fishing fleets.

Recognizing these challenges, the European Union (EU) has implemented measures to address them. In the short to medium term, the EU aims to enhance energy efficiency while gradually transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable and low-carbon energy sources. Specifically, the EU has set a target to reduce fossil fuel intensity by at least 15% between 2019 and 2030. Ultimately, the EU’s objective is to achieve a carbon-neutral footprint by 2050.

To achieve these goals, the fuel use intensity may be used an indicator, and its value will depend, among other factors, on the variations in spatial and temporal distributions of target fish stocks. Additionally, the utilization of the ocean for various purposes (such as wind farms, cables and pipelines, etc), within marine spatial planning, will also impact fleet performance. In order to effectively evaluate management strategies in this rapidly changing environment, there is a growing trend towards utilizing multi-species bio-economic models with high spatial and temporal resolution. However, collecting and generating the suitable economic data to feed spatio-temporal bio-economic models can be a costly endeavour due to the required level of detail. Therefore, striking a balance between capturing the evolving reality of the fishing system and managing its complexity is crucial.

Assistant Professor in Economics at FEUC. He graduated in Economics at Nova SBE where he also obtained his PhD in the field of Environmental Economics. His research interests focus on renewable resources and ecosystem services with a particular emphasis on multidisciplinary bio-economic modelling. To date, he participated as a principal investigator, work package leader or as a member of the research team, in several research projects, having supervised the work of various young researchers. His research has been presented at over 20 international conferences, and he has had been an invited speaker in various universities seminars and workshops. His research has been published in top field journals, such as Ecological Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He is a member of two expert groups of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). He was a member of the board of director for the Spanish-Portuguese Association of Natural Resource and Environmental Economics (AERNA) and has been invited to integrate the scientific committee of various international conferences.

Having catch series and, where appropriate, fishing effort is a necessary tool for the implementation of population assessment methods. Although there are currently independent fishing assessment methods, having long historical series makes it possible to analyze the interaction between long-term environmental fluctuations and the evolution of the density of the resource. In this case, historical series of sardine catches (sardina pilchardus) and accompanying species (anchovy, horse mackerel, round sardinella, chub mackerel, and sometimes atlantic bonito) have been reconstructed in the fisheries that the purse seine fleet in the Gulf of Cádiz carried out between 1908 and 2000, detailing, in addition, the origin of these catches, either in the fishing ground of the Gulf of Cádiz (region 11a Central South Gulf of Cádiz), as well as those caught in the waters of the North African coast (FAO Zones 34.1.1 and 34.1.3). In this way, through this work, it is possible to complete the data available for that species and ICES region, which are currently incomplete, since the WGHANSA series begins for this subzone in 1978, when for the remaining subzones included in the IXa region begin in 1940. In addition, discards and non-marketed catches have been estimated. The series that we present are shown on a monthly basis, although the majority correspond to records per boat and fishing day. The sources used range from records of shipowners’ associations, fish markets, municipal reports, official statistics, scientific publications and, above all, historical local or national printed press, where daily or weekly information on the fleet’s catches was collected. and the prices in the auction. In addition, when necessary, statistical techniques have been used to interpolate missing data.

Graduate (1988) and PhD in Economic and Business Sciences (1995) from the University of Seville. Associate Professor at the University of Seville in the area of Applied Economics (1991), and later Professor at the University of Huelva in the area of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business (2002).

He has held several significant academic positions, including Vice Dean of the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences at the University of Seville for 6 years, Dean of the Faculty of Business Sciences at the University of Huelva for 4 years, Vice Rector of Academic Organization at the University of Huelva for 8 years, and Director of the Department of Quantitative Methods for Economics for 3 years. Currently, he serves as the Coordinator of the doctoral program Regional Science: Business and Territory at the University of Huelva and the Master’s Degree in Intermodal Transport and Logistics at the same university.

He has been an active member of various councils and associations related to statistics, cartography, and economics. He was a member of the Andalusian Council of Statistics from its creation until 2006 and has been representing Andalusian universities at the Andalusian Council of Cartography and Statistics of Andalusia since 2007. Moreover, he served as the President of the Economic and Social Council of the province of Huelva (CESpH) from 2008 to 2022.

His main research focus has been on the Economics of the Fishing Sector and the analysis of Management Policies. His doctoral thesis, defended in 1995, was entitled “Bioeconomic Modeling of Fisheries: Proposals for a Regulation of Purse Seine Fishing in Andalusia,» which utilized Bayesian techniques to estimate stock-recruitment models. He has been an active part of the research team on Econometric and Mathematical Modeling of Fisheries (SEJ-32), supervising nine doctoral theses within the group and contributing to over a dozen doctoral theses aimed at analyzing different aspects of fishing activity.

In recent years, he has broadened his research scope to include the analysis of the port economy, international trade, and the Economics of Culture, particularly focusing on the valuation of intangible heritage assets.

He has an extensive list of scientific publications, with 132 works in total, including articles, books, book chapters, and papers in international congresses and conferences. He has authored or co-authored 37 articles in scientific journals, many of which are indexed in WoS and Scopus, in highly ranked Q1 journals such as Ocean&Coastal Management, Marine Policy, Journal of Marine System, Fisheries Research, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Marine Resource Economics, among others. Additionally, he has published 21 monographs and 45 book chapters, as well as numerous other publications and reports in international institutional repositories.

His research has been funded by various entities, including 19 research projects funded by the European Union or national R+D+i calls, and 30 research contracts with companies and institutions. Notably, he has been involved in projects linked to the analysis of fishing sector problems and the valuation of fishing cultural heritage, such as OCIPESCA, SESAME, MOFISH, TEMEC, CABfishMAN, PRESPO, among others.

He is an active member of different scientific associations and thematic networks, currently serving on the ASEPELT Steering Committee and participating in evaluation processes of research projects and scientific articles. He is also a member of the ICES Working Group on Economics (WGECON).

 Luís Cubillos

Universidad de Concepción, Chile

Dr. Luis Cubillos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Oceanography, Faculty of Natural Science and Oceanography, University of Concepción, Chile. In addition, he is an associated researcher at the Centre for Oceanographic Research in the eastern South Pacific COPAS-COASTAL (https://copas-coastal.cl). In Chile, his research focused on the life history of fish, spawning dynamics, assessment of marine populations, and the influence of environmental factors on fishery productivity and its relationship with environmental variability in small pelagic and demersal fishes. He authored/co-authored about 89 documents and guided more than 20 Fisheries Science Master students.

Carmen Fernández

IEO

Graduated in Mathematical Sciences and PhD in Statistical Methods from the Autonomous University of Madrid. After defending her doctoral thesis in 1994, she carried out research stays and later became a tenured professor of Statistics at various universities in Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. During her years at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), she established a relationship with scientists from the IEO, an organization in which she obtained a position as a senior researcher in 2006. In the period 2006-2011 she was assigned to the IEO in Vigo, working on the stock assessment of commercial species (cod, rooster and hake) in ICES and NAFO areas. Between 2012 and 2017 she held the position of vice-president of the Advisory Committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). She is currently  working on modelling of fishery resources for The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

Jose Carlos Macías

Cofradía Sanlúcar de Barrameda

Jose Carlos Macías is currently the Technical Advisor in Sanlúcar Fishermen’s Organization. He studied Marine Sciences and has worked for the public administration (1999-2011) and now (since 2012) works in the private sector both in fishing and aquaculture as a consultant and advisor. For the last 10 years he has been working for one of the most important organizations in the Gulf of Cadiz (www.cofradiapescadoresdesanlucar.com ), which supports a fleet of more than 120 fishing boats, in modalities such as bottom trawling, purse seine and artisanal fishing. In recent years he has been actively working in the purse seine fishery, developing studies promoted by the Cofradia and participating in other external projects. He knows the sector directly and objectively, as well as all the dynamics of marketing in auctions and other collateral aspects of the activity.

Margarita Rincón

IEO

Margarita María Rincón holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the National University of Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia) and a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Granada. After several postdoctoral contracts, she got a permanent position as a senior scientist at the Oceanographic Center of Cádiz (IEO-CSIC) in August 2020, where she currently works. Her research focuses on mathematical-statistical modeling of fish population dynamics, taking into account the effects of fishing and the environment, fisheries assessment, the development of decision-making tools, and the analysis of management strategies from an ecological and socio-economic perspective. She has participated in various national and international projects and is currently the Principal Investigator of Math4Fish: Mathematical Modelling Tools for Stock Assessment in Spanish Fisheries. In these projects, she has collaborated with researchers from various countries in developing models and tools for communicating results to stakeholders to ensure both sustainable and economically viable fishing (participation in more than 20 deliverables). Furthermore, as an advocate for applying science to society, she is an official national member of the ICES groups WGHANSA and WGMIXFISH, where she is responsible for the mathematical aspects of the assessment of anchovy in the Gulf of Cádiz and modeling the impact of interactions between different commercial demersal fisheries (mixed fisheries), respectively.

Santiago Cerviño

IEO

Santiago Cerviño, Ph.D. in Biological Sciences is currently the coordinator of the IEO assessment team in European waters ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea). He is also a Spanish alternate in ICES Advisory Committee (ACOM). He has been member of many international working groups related with fishery science. He has participated in research projects on fishing topics such as EU VI and VII FP (e.g. BECAUSE, UNCOVER, ECOKNOWS, MYFISH or MareFrame), he has been the coordinator of the Spanish PN project IMPRESS and now is working on the Math4fish and Fishclim Spanish projects financed by NextGeneration EU funds. The research activity in these projects is focused on the development of assessment to support the sustainability and management of fisheries resources. Their main lines of research are focused on assessment methods, the integration of biological and environmental processes in the assessment, the uncertainty in scientific advice, or the evaluation of management strategies.

Andrés Uriarte

AZTI

Andrés Uriarte (PhD in Biology, Principal Researcher at AZTI). With more than 35 years of experience, he has been responsible of the scientific monitoring of pelagic fisheries of the Basque country since 1987. His expertise covers fishery monitoring programs, direct surveying, biology (growth and reproduction) and integrated assessment and management of pelagic fish resources, having contributed to, or leaded several international projects on these subjects. He contributed to the implementation of the Daily Egg Production Method (DEPM) to the Bay of Biscay anchovy, and he has cooperated with European Commission STECF in the development of the original (2008) and revised (2014) anchovy management plans. In recent years he has participated in the evaluation of management strategies for the Iberian and Bay of Biscay sardine populations. As expert on pelagic fish resources he has participated and chaired several advisory working groups in ICES and for GCFM (FAO) and has been co-convenor of several international workshops. He has about 95 papers or written contributions, of which about 60 are chapters of books or Articles (SCI journals).

Laura Wise 

Laura Wise works at the Portuguese Institute  of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) in fisheries dynamics, stock assessment and most recently in management strategy evaluation of small pelagic species. Since 2018 she is one of the Portuguese members of the ICES working group for horse mackerel, anchovy and sardine (WGHANSA) working with the Iberian sardine stock. She has been involved in other national and international working groups concerning fisheries assessment and management aiming at providing scientific advice for the conservation and management of marine species.

Científicos especializados calculan anualmente el nivel de captura que permite que la pesca sea sostenible. Para esto se usan modelos matemáticos que estiman la cantidad de individuos y entornos de simulación que determinan una fórmula que permite saber qué proporción de esa cantidad garantiza la sostenibilidad de la pesquería.  Pero estas recomendaciones difícilmente se llevarán a la práctica si en el proceso no se involucra al sector pesquero y a la administración.

Aunque el flujo de datos y la dificultad de simulación de escenarios, han venido aumentando exponencialmente junto con la complejidad de los modelos, se ha observado que muchos componentes del modelado y la simulación pueden ser automatizados mediante la creación de nuevas herramientas que faciliten su desarrollo, y que estas herramientas a su vez pueden favorecer la comunicación con todos los actores involucrados en el asesoramiento pesquero.

Por esto el objetivo principal de Math4Fish es el desarrollo e implementación de herramientas que mejoren y faciliten este modelado matemático, haciéndolo reproducible, transparente y más eficiente, y a su vez utilizar estas herramientas para fomentar procesos participativos que involucren al sector pesquero y a la administración.

La aplicabilidad de estas herramientas se probará en los siguientes casos de estudio:

• Merluza (Merluccius merluccius), stock Sur, divisiones ICES 8c and 9a
• Lenguado (Solea solea), divisiones ICES 8c and 9a
• Sardina, Sardina pilchardus (divisiones ICES 8c and 9a) y anchoa (9a)
• Bacalao (Gadus morhua) , camarón (Pandalus borealis) y gallineta (Sebastes spp), enfoque multiespecífico, área NAFO 3M

• Besugo (Pagellus bogaraveo), subárea ICES 8

Math4Fish es un proyecto financiado por la Unión Europea-NextGenerationEU y hace parte del convenio entre el Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca, y Alimentación y la Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas a través del Instituto Español de Oceanografía para impulsar la investigación pesquera como base para la gestión pesquera sostenible.

Las poblaciones de especies marinas viven inmersas en un ambiente cambiante y, consecuentemente, sufren el impacto de la variabilidad ambiental sobre su dinámica poblacional. Si, además, la población en cuestión está sometida a explotación pesquera, su capacidad de resistir condiciones ambientales subóptimas puede verse comprometida, siendo su resiliencia menor en situaciones de sobrepesca. Esta conexión ambiente-población es especialmente relevante en el contexto de cambio global y sus potenciales repercusiones sobre el medio marino y la explotación de sus recursos vivos.

Los cambios a medio y largo plazo de las condiciones de nuestros ecosistemas marinos pueden provocar fuertes alteraciones en los tamaños de las poblaciones y/o en sus áreas/estaciones de distribución. Es necesario, pues, que el sector pesquero sea consciente de los potenciales cambios en los recursos durante los próximos años/décadas, de tal forma que se puedan proponer estrategias de adaptación con el fin de minimizar los impactos.

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo principal mejorar el conocimiento científico para el asesoramiento a la gestión de pesquerías en relación a las estrategias de adaptación a potenciales cambios en la accesibilidad de ciertos recursos pesqueros en las aguas españolas.

En una primera fase, se han elegido especies y stocks para los cuales se disponen ya de conocimientos y modelos matemáticos que describen la conexión entre las condiciones ambientales y sus fluctuaciones espacio-temporales y que son relevantes para el sector pesquero español. Después se ha analizado dos escenarios de los definidos por el IPCC y se han obtenido un set de varios modelos climáticos (ensemble de simulaciones) por cada escenario para poder evaluar la incertidumbre de las proyecciones y extraer información robusta y aprovechable por el sector pesquero.

En una última fase del proyecto, esas proyecciones en base al cambio climático se analizarán de forma conjunta con el sector en la aproximación conocida como MSE (Management Strategy Evaluation).

Proyecto financiado por la Unión Europea -NextGenerationEU. Componente 3. Inversión 7. Convenio entre el Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación y la Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas M.P. – A través del Instituto Español de Oceanografía – Para impulsar la investigación pesquera como base para la gestión pesquera sostenible, Eje4.

El objetivo del proyecto SOSMED (Mejora del conocimiento científico-técnico para la SOStenibilidad de las pesquerías demersales del MEDiterráneo occidental) es mejorar la información científica como base del asesoramiento a la gestión de las pesquerías demersales de la flota española mediterránea. Esta mejora es especialmente relevante en la situación de sobrepesca generalizada en la que se encuentran los stocks demersales del Mediterráneo occidental que, además de provocar una disminución de su biomasa, ha tenido como consecuencia una reducción de hasta el 50% en el número de unidades de la flota de arrastre española durante las últimas décadas. En este contexto, en 2020 entró en vigor un plan europeo plurianual para la pesca demersal en el Mediterráneo occidental (MAP), cuyo objetivo final es alcanzar, de forma progresiva y paulatina, una mortalidad por pesca en 2025 acorde con los intervalos del rendimiento máximo sostenible y mantenerlos desde entonces. El MAP identifica cinco especies objetivo: merluza (Merluccius merluccius), salmonete de fango (Mullus barbatus), gamba blanca (Parapenaeus longirostris), cigala (Nephrops norvegicus) y gamba roja (Aristeus antennatus), pero también reconoce el carácter mixto de las pesquerías demersales y que se deben tener en cuenta sus capturas accesorias. A partir de datos oficiales de capturas, información del sistema de localización de buques vía satélite, información obtenida por observadores a bordo que realizan el seguimiento de la flota comercial y datos de campañas científicas, se están realizando diferentes aproximaciones, como analizar el comportamiento de la flota de arrastre, la distribución de los recursos demersales y hábitats bentónicos, los efectos de la aplicación de las medidas de gestión contempladas en el MAP, así como mejorar distintos aspectos de las evaluaciones de stocks demersales de cara a aumentar el conocimiento sobre su estado de explotación.

Proyecto financiado por la Unión Europea -NextGenerationEU. Componente 3. Inversión 7. Convenio entre el Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación y la Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas M.P. – A través del Instituto Español de Oceanografía – Para impulsar la investigación pesquera como base para la gestión pesquera sostenible, Eje 1.

Shuttlethread is a development consultancy based in the UK specialising in data management tools and web applications, primarily as part of research projects. Founded in 2010, Shuttle Thread is a vehicle for Jamie Lentin, who has been working in software development using predominantly Python, R & Javascript since the turn of the century.

The session will present ModelWizard, an interactive web-based tool that will, based on a template containing key data sets, produce scripts and configuration to act as starting points for models both in Gadget3 and SS3. The template can either be filled in through the web-based Shiny application, or by downloading an Excel template and re-uploading. As a result streamlining and guiding a modeller through the initial setup phase, and providing something that can then be further customised.

ModelWizard is designed to work with the rest of the Gadget Framework; a suite of complimentary open-source tools written in R, with the aim of producing reproducible & maintainable assessment models. Written as part of work with the Marine & Freshwater Research Institute in Iceland.

At it’s core, gadget3 is a backward-compatible rewrite of the Gadget modelling framework, producing gadget2-equivalent models that can run in both R and TMB, allowing the use of Automatic Differentiation when optimising models. The framework is far more extensible than the previous gadget2, entirely new custom model processes can be added by writing R which is then converted to C++.

The other key part is MFDB, an R package for data collation and aggregation, primarily designed to assist in model creation. It provides a standard schema that can contain most common forms of data used in assessment, and utilities to quickly aggregate and format ready for insertion into model input files.

La NAFO es un organismo intergubernamental de ciencia y gestión pesquera. Su principal objetivo es garantizar la conservación a largo plazo y el uso sostenible de los recursos pesqueros en la zona de la Convención de NAFO y, al hacerlo, salvaguardar los ecosistemas marinos en los que se encuentran dichos recursos. Su gestión se aplica a la mayoría de los recursos pesqueros del Atlántico Noroccidental, excepto el salmón, los atunes/marlines, las ballenas y las especies sedentarias (por ejemplo, los mariscos).

La NAFO se fundó en 1979 como sucesora de la ICNAF (Comisión Internacional de Pesquerías del Atlántico Noroeste) (1949-1978).

Su organización se basa en las Partes Contratantes, que son los miembros de la Organización. En la actualidad, la NAFO cuenta con 13 Partes Contratantes. Su estructura está dividida en tres órganos: la Secretaría, que se ocupa de la parte administrativa, el Consejo Científico, que es el órgano que da consejo científico, y la Comisión, que es la que toma las decisiones de gestión.

El Consejo Científico recopila y mantiene estadísticas y registros, y publica información relativa a las pesquerías, incluidos los factores medioambientales y ecológicos. Previa solicitud, el Consejo Científico también asesora a la Comisión y a los Estados costeros sobre las poblaciones y la conservación y gestión de los recursos pesqueros.

Las funciones del Consejo Científico pueden, en caso necesario, llevarse a cabo en cooperación con otras organizaciones públicas o privadas que tengan objetivos afines.

Cada Parte Contratante es miembro del Consejo Científico y nombra a sus propios representantes.

La flota española ha tenido una importante tradición pesquera en caladeros de África Occidental. En la actualidad, esta actividad se lleva a cabo mediante Acuerdos bilaterales de Asociación para la Pesca Sostenible (AAPS) entre la UE y los países ribereños o mediante autorizaciones directas. La explotación compartida de los stocks por parte de  países costeros y por flotas extranjeras hace necesario un marco científico conjunto para evaluarlos, proporcionado por el Comité de Pesca para el Atlántico Centro-Oriental (CPACO, CECAF).

CECAF es un Organismo Regional de Pesca (ORP) de la FAO encargado de promover el desarrollo sostenible de los recursos marinos, la gestión responsable de la pesca y la cooperación regional en cuestiones de política pesquera. Su área de competencia incluye aguas nacionales y de alta mar entre el Estrecho de Gibraltar y la desembocadura del río Congo. Los stocks de CECAF se evalúan en cuatro grupos de trabajo (GT): demersales (Norte y Sur) y pequeños pelágicos (Norte y Sur). Basándose en los resultados de las evaluaciones, los GT presentan recomendaciones de gestión al Subcomité Científico (SSC), que discute y eventualmente modifica las recomendaciones de gestión y las eleva al Comité. El Comité se encarga de la toma de decisiones, lo que implica proporcionar recomendaciones sobre medidas de gestión a los países para que las introduzcan en sus legislaciones nacionales, aunque estas recomendaciones no tienen carácter vinculante.

El IEO-CSIC desempeña un papel vital en el estudio y la evaluación de los recursos de CECAF, ya que proporciona información científica sobre las pesquerías españolas y conocimiento experto sobre métodos de evaluación. La mayoría de los stocks de CECAF son de datos limitados y las evaluaciones se realizan con un modelo de producción de no equilibrio basado en el modelo de Schaefer (BioDyn). Aunque no se han implantado formalmente, en los últimos años se han probado con éxito varias metodologías de datos limitados (PSA, SPiCT, JABBA, LBB, LBSPR, CMSY).

La Comisión General para la Pesca en el Mediterráneo (General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, GFCM – CGPM) es un organismo regional de ordenación pesquera (OROP) establecido en 1949 en el marco de la FAO. Su objetivo es unificar los esfuerzos de los países hacia la conservación y el uso sostenible de los recursos marinos vivos a todos los niveles (biológico, social, económico y medioambiental) y el desarrollo sostenible de la acuicultura. La GFCM juega un papel crítico en la gestión de la pesca y tiene autoridad para proponer recomendaciones vinculantes para la conservación y la gestión y para el desarrollo de la acuicultura. Las partes contratantes de la GFCM se reúnen anualmente para revisar y adoptar las recomendaciones hechas por sus órganos subsidiarios: El Comité Científico Asesor de Pesca (SAC), el Comité Científico Asesor de Acuicultura (CAQ), el Comité de Cumplimiento (COC), el Comité de Administración y Finanzas (CAF) y el Grupo de Trabajo para el Mar Negro (WGBS). La GFCM implementa su política y actividades a través de su Secretariado, con sede en Roma. Desde allí supervisa un enfoque subregional de la gestión pesquera a través de sus unidades técnicas en las subregiones de la GFCM: Mediterráneo Occidental, Mediterráneo Central, Mar Adriático, Mediterráneo Oriental y Mar Negro. En cooperación con otras OROP, la GFCM desempeña un papel central en la coordinación de los esfuerzos gubernamentales para gestionar eficazmente las pesquerías a nivel regional siguiendo el Acuerdo de las Naciones Unidas sobre Poblaciones de Peces y en línea con el Código de Conducta para la Pesca Responsable de la FAO. También trabaja en estrecha colaboración con organizaciones intergubernamentales, no gubernamentales y de la sociedad civil. La GFCM coordina y se beneficia del apoyo de iniciativas para mejorar la cooperación científica y el desarrollo de capacidades entre sus partes contratantes.

Scientific Committee

Margarita María Rincón Hidalgo
Juan Gil Herrera
Marta Quinzán Rodríguez
Susana Garrido
Santiago Cerviño López
Marta Cousido Rocha
Marta Ballesteros Álvarez
Mª Grazia Pennino
Mª Ángeles Gamaza Márquez
Alfonso Pérez Rodríguez
Mª José Zúñiga Basualto
Eider Andonegui
Andrea Jiménez Gaseni

Organising Committee

Andrea Jiménez Gaseni
Margarita María Rincón Hidalgo
Mª Ángeles Gamaza Márquez
Alfonso Pérez Rodríguez
Mª José Zúñiga Basualto
Santiago Cerviño
Mª Grazia Pennino
Marta Cousido Rocha