Working group on the biology and assessment of deep-sea fisheries resources (WGDEEP)

• Main Author: ICES
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ICES 2020
• Subjects: Iceland; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00810/92229/98232.pdf; https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.6015; https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00810/92229/

The ICES working group on biology and assessment of deep-sea fisheries resources (WGDEEP) provides scientific advice on 29 assessment units including stocks of deep-water species and those on shelf areas and in deep waters. Advice is provided every other year for each stock, except for stocks from ICES Division 5.a (Iceland) with annual advice. Due to the Covid 19 disruption, Iceland did not request advice for local stocks. First draft of advice was thus prepared for 13 stocks out of the 29. For the same reason, the meeting was conducted entirely by web-based correspondence. In response most discussions that were not pivotal for advisory work this year were postponed to next year’s meeting. Available time-series for international landings and discards, fishing effort, survey indices and biological information were updated for all stocks and are presented in Sections 4–15 of the report. An important topic that was discussed regarded boarders of species whose distribution extends between two advisory bodies. In WGDEEP the issue is particularly relevant for blackspot seabream stock in ICES Subarea 9. Main conclusions regarding each stock with advice 2020 were: The advice on alfonsinos in 1-10, 12 and 14 refers to two species, Beryx splendens and Beryx decadactylus, that are often not differentiated in the reported landings. In recent years, landings of the two species have been stable. The biomass of blue ling in 5b, 6 and 7 increased in recent years probably reflecting the low fishing mortality for several years. Both fishing mortality and the spawning stock biomass are well within sustainable levels. Black scabbardfish in the Northeast Atlantic showed a slight reduction in abundance in the last two years. Fishing effort on this species have been decreasing probably associated with the ban of trawling in deeper areas. Greater forkbeard in the Northeast Atlantic and adjacent waters is a bycatch species. The combined six survey biomass-index was reduced in two years. Landings have decreased since 2013. Discards are ...