2^nd Steering Committee Meeting of MariFish held at the ICES Conference in Maastricht

Members of the MariFish Steering Committee and five observers met in Maastricht during the week that the ICES Annual Science Conference was held. The meeting took place at the Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre (MECC) in the Netherlands on Monday 18th September and Tuesday 19th September, giving members an opportunity to engage with the fisheries science community and publicise MariFish widely.

Photo: The Co-ordinator, John Lock,
explaining the aims of MariFish, at
the stand at ICES. The main aims of the meeting were to assess the progress of the first few months of the project and to plan ahead effectively for the next twelve months. High priority was given to the effective development of joint programmes of research between MariFish members. Another key element to the meeting was raising the profile of the project by informing the scientific community of the opportunities and benefits available to them from MariFish and by making the European Commission and other ERA-NETs aware of progress made so far.

MariFish and MarinERA shared a stand in the foyer of the ICES Science conference where posters and leaflets (PDF, 1.9 MB) were displayed.

Joint Calls for Research

The possibility of fast tracking a pilot joint call was discussed in order to move forward as quickly as possible and also to use the experience to ‘fine tune’ the other later joint calls for research. Practical arrangements were discussed and Partners agreed that proposals and plans should be discussed in January 2007.

Progress on the five ‘live’ work packages.

A report identifying fisheries management drivers was presented to Partners, which stimulated discussions on the main findings and how these could be published. This report provided information on the opinions of fisheries managers on a number of key fisheries issues, for example on the importance of fishing to each partner country and the drivers for fisheries management within that partner country.

A report comparing methods of research programme identification, commissioning and management within the MariFish partnership, identifying particular strengths and weaknesses of the different national structures is currently being prepared, with data collected, analysed and verified. A final analysis text will be agreed at the next Work Package Management Group meeting in April 2007.

MariFish Partners have been individually visited and interviewed to gather information on the strengths and deficiencies of European and international research collaboration and coordination. An overview of the Partners’ national funding structures highlighted the many differences between them. Two regional workshops were planned; one for the North Sea, Baltic Sea and International and Atlantic Waters for approximately 24 participants in January 2007, and one for  the Mediterranean Sea for approximately 12 participants, also in January 2007.

Good progress had been made on describing and summarising the research funded by each of the Partners with plans made to store the data in a web-based interactive homepage. The workpackage leader described the proposed structure and layout of this website and discussed the pros and cons of listing entries at either the project or the programme level.

An update on the progress of the report on the current status of socio-economic research in the field of fisheries, was provided to Partners. A literature review had been carried out and a meeting planned for the 23rd and 24th November with the main institutes involved.  A database had been constructed which would hold details of the socio-economic research programmes and their linkages. The draft report was to be completed in December 2006/January 2007 and discussed with the core group in order to develop a high level statement for February/March 2007. At the next Work Package Management Group meeting in April 2007 time would be set aside to discuss the report in detail with all Partners.