Work Package 8: 10 Year Forward look and Strategic Research Programmes

This work package aims to identify the strategic research evidence that will best meet the needs of fisheries managers in the future. A joint call for research is the final output from this work package.

International Symposium at Roskilde

Speakers from a variety of perspectives - scientists, programme managers and RAC representatives - gave presentations to approximately 100 participants on the first day. Workshop discussions followed on the second day, during which recommendations for strategic research priorities were formulated.

• D8.1 Report of workshop Future Demands for Fisheries Research (PDF, 206 KB)

Joint call for research – fishery management indicators

Denmark, Iceland, France, Cyprus, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom have agreed to fund research on the development of operational fisheries management indicators that will help fishery managers to develop long-term management plans. A total of €4.3m is available to consortia of three of more research organisations. Several consortia may be funded, covering a number of topics that will contribute to the development of operational indicators, as agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg 2002) resolution “to maintain or restore stocks to levels that can produce the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY)”.

Why develop fisheries management indicators?

Future demands for fisheries managers were identified during the international symposium in Denmark in June 2007. The changing priorities for fisheries management were discussed, with today’s management strategies focused on the avoidance of stock collapse but now increasingly moving towards more complex long-term management strategies that would be able to deliver profit without unacceptable damage to the environment. Although some scientists feel the MSY concept may not be achievable, most agree that a management approach that considers the social, economic and biological interactions of fishing would require robust indicators to allow managers to apply effective management strategies.

Possible topics

A wide range of topics could be investigated. These include for example:

• The relationship between stock size and recruitment to establish the underlying links between recruitment, environment and stock composition.
• An investigation into multi-species indicators would benefit fishery managers, who at present are setting targets for single species without taking into account the effect of population changes of one species of the interactions between their prey and their competitors.
• A definition for an acceptable environmental impact of fisheries on the environment would be important for fisheries managers, to help assess the long term functioning of the ecosystem.
• A new definition of fishery yield, taking into account economic factors such as benefit to regional economies and conflicts of land use would be welcomed to provide a more effective resource value for a stock.

Applications

The implementation of the call is managed by the call secretariat of the Work Package 8 leader, DFIA (Danish Food Industry Agency). The call will be announced on 15^th December 2008 and will close on 2^nd March 2009. The call secretariat will check applications against general criteria and then an international expert committee will evaluate the projects against specific criteria.

More information, including a detailed description of procedures for the call and key dates, can be found under Joint call for research proposals announced.