Document title / Comments on the thematic assessment
Code / 3-4
Category / INF
Agenda Item / 3 – Assessments and indicators
Submission date / 14.2.2018
Submitted by / The plenary
Background
This document contains specific comments on the contents of the third thematic assessment on coastal fish (document 3-3).
Comments to the thematic assessment provided by FISH-PRO II 5-2018
- Title of the assessment
o it was suggested that ‘Status of coastal fish communities in the Baltic Sea’ with a subtitle ‘third thematic assessment of coastal fish in the Baltic Sea’ could be used
- Map on monitoring stations
o The information that Danish monitoring data is compiled from various locations and aggregated to what is shown on the map, could be presented in more depth (showing the location of individual fishermen) under the section (3.1.5) where methods are described
o The locations of additional Latvian and Swedish stations will be added to the map. Estonia will consider if it is appropriate to also include additional Estonian monitoring stations
o The different monitoring stations could be depicted with different colours (for where assessments are made and where not) and a short explanatory text about them could be added
- Terminology
o term ‘piscivorous fish’ to be used instead of ‘predatory fish’
o HOLAS II terminology needs to be applied to the report, e.g. instead the word ‘GES’ to use good status (as GES is too strictly associated with MSFD) and to use ‘threshold value’ instead of ‘boundary‘
o consider an alternative term for referring to ‘recreational fisheries data’
- Paragraph on recreational fisheries data
o add also information on where fyke nets are used under the ‘recreational fisheries data’ section 3.1.5
- Tables 3-5
o The layout of the tables will need to be further considered for the BSEP publication, they could be added as an Appendix and/or the most important results be presented in updated versions of the tables
- Tables 7-9
o It is most important that the data from years between 2011-2016 are represented
o for the spatial representation criteria a range of fishermen/stations should be provided if it has varied over years. These range numbers will be provided to the Project Manager
o for the spatial representation criteria, the gillnet-monitoring data should only include the actual number of stations per assessment unit, not the number of stations times number of replicates as it is now. For the commercial catch statistics data, the number of fishermen per assessment unit should be used, and for the recreational fisheries data the number of positions of fyke nets and gill nets in each assessment unit should be used
o for Lithuania, information on the number of stations per assessment unit is lacking for the spatial representation criteria. Lithuania will provide the number of nets and stations to the Project Manager
- Section 3.2.3 (other results)
o Poland will provide suggested edits in the submitted draft version of the report to the Project Manager.
- Section 4.1.2 (Partial fishing closures)
o There are no references supporting these statements –> to be added if they exist
- Chapter 5 (Conclusions and recommendations)
The important future aims/activities were agreed on (bullet points on pages 56-57) with additional amendments/edits and the following comments provided:
o separate the first bullet point on monitoring and harmonizing assessments and revise the text to be ‘Maintain the current level as a minimum of monitoring and initiate, if possible, new programs and relevant data collection’
o first bullet point to read ‘encourage the safeguarding..’
o use of data should be harmonized (not monitoring)
o ‘Continued development of current indicators and assessment methods’ (point 3) to read ‘Harmonize and develop indicators and assessment methods’
o ‘Development of generic size based indicators’ can be a separate point as it is
o ‘Evaluation of measures to restore and support coastal fish communities’ should read: ‘Evaluation of measures to restore and support coastal fish communities should be done’. The question how to do the evaluation was raised. A systematic review is ongoing.
o It was suggested to rephrase the sentences so that information on who is to do the work would be provided for each action in the bullet points, or to include this information in the sentence before the bullet points
o It was agreed to add a bullet point ‘Use the existing monitoring network to further follow the distribution and expansion and effects of the round goby coastal fish communities’
- References
o Will need to be harmonized
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