Conveners:
Niels Axel Nielsen
Micheal Ó Cinnéide

The aims of this Session are to promote cooperation and shared activities among ICES members, in line with Goal 5 of the ICES Strategic Plan - to consider quality assurance and standards in research vessel programmes and to review new technologies and potential future applications for research vessels.

The Session will be of interest to the ICES marine research community and agencies, which finance the research vessels.

Conveners:
Jon Side
Heye Rumohr
John Anderson
David Reid

In 2000 and 2001 a range of workshops took place which considered issues such as seabed imaging and marine habitat classification in the North Atlantic. At the 2000 Annual Science Conference in Bruges, Belgium it was recognised that links need to be established between rapidly developing imaging technologies and the sampling, identification, and classification of biota, in order to be able to produce standardised international habitat maps that will serve as a basis for sustainable management of the marine resources.

Contributions addressing the following topics are invited:

• Progress in linking biological sampling techniques with geophysical sampling techniques to prepare marine habitat maps.
• Progress in developing an ICES marine habitat classification.
• Progress in the production of large-scale (i.e. international) habitat maps.
• Standardisation of data and the development of a joint (ICES) database.
• Habitat maps supporting the designation of marine protected areas or the implementation of management plans.

Conveners:
John Pope
Colin Bannister
Odd Aksel Bergstad
Jake Rice
Ron O'Dor

Conveners:
Richard Haedrich
Manfred Kaufmann
Hein v. Westernhagen

Seamounts are ecosystems spatially separated from the continental shelves, sometimes several hundreds or thousands of miles. In addition they are located between the deep-sea and the euphotic zone. As such they harbour a particular array of species that have the potential to invade these relatively isolated areas, and frequently live below the euphotic zone. Thus seamount communities, including those from the mid-oceanic ridges, are exposed to unique living conditions for reproduction and dispersion as well as for maintaining their livelihood.

Several submarine mounts and ridges have developed, and still maintain, large fish populations with considerable biomass, which have even triggered various exploratory and commercial fishing operations in the past.

Contributions on the ecology, biology, and taxonomy of target and non-target species as well as contributions dealing with the links between hydrographic, oceanographic, and biological processes on and around seamounts are invited.

Three topics will be addressed in particular:

• Biodiversity and macro-ecology of seamounts - endemism at seamounts - isolated habitats or stepping stones in the sea? - community structure and regional fauna
  
  
• Food web structure over seamounts- links between currents and topography are considered important for the aggregation and production of plankton and micronecton - modification of bentho-pelagic coupling over seamounts

• Vulnerability of seamount ecosystems- prospects for nature conservation and their potential for marine protected areas - sustainable use and limits to exploitation for commercially important species

Ocean Processes and their Influence on Living Marine Resources

Environmental Influences on Trophic Interactions
(Session N) Timetable

Conveners:
Luis Valdés
Jean Claude Therriault
George Hunt
Simon Greenstreet

This Session is intended to build on recent Annual Science Conference Theme Sessions dealing with environment-plankton-fish interactions and top predators. This year's Session will emphasize phytoplankton-zooplankton interactions.

Physical processes at a wide variety of spatial and temporal scales are becoming recognized as important for the profitable foraging of many groups of organisms from zooplankton to fish to seabirds and marine mammals. At the larger spatial and temporal scales, places where these transfers are concentrated may be hotspots of particular concern for conservation of marine resources. It is hoped that this Session will explore these ideas over a wide range of organisms and spatial scales.

Contributions on copepods, jellyfish, fish, birds, and mammals are welcome, as are contributions addressing recent remote sensing work on mammals, birds, and fish. Contributions that address contrasting responses of predators to regions of enhanced production as opposed to areas with mechanical aggregation of prey are also welcome.

Conveners:
Maria-de-Fatima Borges
Dankert Skagen
Carmela Porteiro
Brian Rothschild

In the last ten years, there has been increasing interest in the relationship between climate and the stock size of many important commercial fish species. A number of species show a clear correlation with climatic indices like, Global Temperature Anomaly and Atmospheric Circulation Index (Klyashtorin, 2000), depending on the different systems of the globe oceans to which the specific marine population is adjusted.

Data reflecting multi-decadal climatic changes have been recorded for centuries, although identification of the long-term patterns is relatively recent. Accepting those multi-decadal changes as real, scientists from several fields have accepted the challenge of understanding the causal processes and mechanisms that generate them. By nature, these processes are extremely complex, as are their consequences and implications. It has been suggested that upwelling intensity is linked to large-scale climatic effects, thus linking climate change to the rate of nutrient transport into the eutrophic upper ocean layer, and ultimately to changing primary production. Although several hypotheses on the processes are already being tested by in situ experiments in the different systems of the ocean environment world wide, several questions about their implications remain to be posed. A key question for ICES is: What difference does it make in terms of the current scientific tools for provision of fisheries management and ecosystem advice when productivity regimes are alternatively high and low?

The pelagic fish marine species are among the best candidates to investigate this question. Due to their trophic position they usually respond faster than demersal fishes to environmental change, and their common ocean habitats, such as upwelling systems, are frequently highly dynamic. The Californian and Japanese sardine population-environment relationships are particularly well studied, but there are many other populations from the both sides of the Atlantic, which are being investigated currently. In some cases, such as Californian sardine, harvest control rules that take account of environmental indices are already in place, to adjust harvest during the transitional periods between the different productivity regimes of the pelagic stocks. In Japanese sardine fishing mortality rates are maintained low and vary with regime, but it has been difficult to find an index that is a useful basis for management advice during the transition between productivity regimes.

The purpose of this Session is to bring together scientists from both sides of the Atlantic, and globally, to consider how to incorporate decadal-scale productivity regimes in advice on management of pelagic stocks and ecosystem, and to identify priorities for future collaborative research.

Contributions addressing the following activities are welcome:

• Identification of quantifiable major physical forces controlling regime shifts and indices available to physical oceanographers, meteorologists, and biologists to monitor and track the limits and transition of the regimes in their different temporal and spatial scales.
• Real-time environmental indices to be used as recruitment indices in short term predictions for short-lived small pelagic fishes or invertebrates, and their dependence on temporal and spatial scales involved in biological processes and timing of fisheries.
• Integration of valid and well monitored environmental variables in the stock assessment modelling and in stock recruitment- relationships.
• Monitoring growth, maturity, fecundity, condition factor, gonado-somatic indices as indicators of regime shifts and its possible use in medium-term projections.
• Implications in natural mortality rates, regarding pelagic fish as forage in species interactions and communities including regime shifts.
• Definition of long-term biological reference points Fmax, F0.1, Fmsy, Fpa and Bmax, Bmsy, Bpa, considering more than one regime of productivity and harvest control rules to change between regimes.
• Feedback dialogue between scientists and stakeholders for definition of adequate management strategies in pelagic fisheries linked with advice for the ecosystem.

Conveners:
Charles Hannah
Wolfgang Fennel Harald Loeng

This Session will address physical oceanographic processes in coastal ocean-circulation, turbulence, upwelling, etc. Contributions addressing the following issues will be welcome:

• modelling of circulation and transports.
• turbulence in the coastal ocean boundary layers and the water column.
• measurements, comparisons, and validations.

Conveners:
Philip C. Reid
Maria-de-Fatima Borges
Einar Svendsen

Recent studies on both sides of the Atlantic, in the North Sea and Gulf of Maine/Scotian shelf regions have demonstrated that inflows from the boundary currents at the shelf edge can have pronounced effects on adjacent shelf ecosystems. Changes in zooplankton communities appear to provide a good indicator of such inflow events. In the case of the North Sea a change circa 1988 associated with such inflows has been termed a regime shift. All trophic levels including fish were affected and the biomass of the benthos, at least at one time-series station, has doubled. Nutrients, oxygen, current speed and other variables also appear to be associated with the change. Other work has shown that pulsed northerly movement of warm water in the slope current may be implicated in the biological changes. On the other side of the Atlantic, studies as part of US GLOBEC, have shown a pronounced impact on the plankton and ecosystem through incursion of cold water from intermediate depth Labrador slope water. The forcing mechanisms behind these events, their biological response and their impact on fish stocks is poorly understood. The consequence of such events may be long-lived and likely to have major implications for fish stock management. The purpose of this session will be to bring together scientists from both sides of the Atlantic to examine in an interdisciplinary way the effects of oceanic inflows onto shelf seas with the aim of identifying priorities for future collaborative research.

Contributions addressing the following activities will be welcome:

• Identification of historical events in shelf systems that may have been caused by major oceanic incursions.
• The role that atmospheric variability and climate change may be playing in forcing such incursions.
• Description of the biological responses and specifically zooplankton communities to oceanic flows into shelf systems.
• Quantification of the physical processes and their variability that contribute to oceanic inflows.
• Responses of fish at varying stages in their life cycles.
• Modelling the physical basis of inflow events and resulting ecosystem responses.

Aquaculture: New Trends and Developments

Conveners:
Ian Bricknell
Joel Gatesoupe

In the face of multi-drug antibiotic resistance, and vaccine limitations, working towards natural disease resistance whether by genetic selection or other means has turned to a crucial issue. The use of immuno-modulators and/or probiotics in marine aquaculture has the potential to provide many benefits to the industry. Immuno-modulators can, in theory, improve fish health by up-regulating the immune system, reduce the requirement for intervention with immuno-therapeutics and improve animal welfare. They also offer the potential to improve larvae and fry survival as judicious use of these compounds could protect larvae from endemic pathogens in the hatchery.

Probiotics may have a wide range of beneficial effects on animal health, but few have been documented in fish so far. They may act directly on the host by stimulating the immune response, and the ontogeny of digestive enzymes in larvae. They may fight against pathogens by secreting antagonistic compounds like antibiotics, surfactants, etc. They may also intervene in the host-pathogen relationship by competing for adhesion sites, nutrients, or by destroying toxins. This variety allows synergy, and probiotics could be also combined with immuno-stimulants.

Contributions that investigate the potential benefits and possible detrimental effects that the use of immuno-modulators and probiotics may have on marine fish culture will be welcome.

Conveners:
David Bengtson
Karin Pittman
Patrick Sorgeloos

Hatchery rearing of commercially important marine fish is a sine qua non in ICES countries for modern commercial aquaculture of marketable product and for stock enhancement of commercial fisheries. In the last quarter century, many of the technical problems that caused the quantity of larvae and juveniles reared to be a "bottleneck" for food production have been overcome. Today, it is the quality of the juveniles produced that is of interest, but quality means different things to different end-users. Commercial aquaculture operations increasingly want juveniles from broodstock that have been selectively bred for fast growth and disease resistance, whereas stock enhancement operations want juveniles with genetic diversity as close as possible to that of wild populations. In either case, the quality of hatchery rearing depends on broodstock nutrition and holding conditions, larval nutrition, microbial ecology of the larval rearing tanks, and many other factors. Recent studies have shown that epigenetic factors operating during the early stages of development determine quality of individuals during later stages and direct effects are not always easy to determine.

Contributions are welcome which examine the genetic and environmental factors involved in the improvement of juvenile quality, including:

• selective breeding vs. maintenance of genetic diversity;
• biotic and abiotic factors important in the larval rearing conditions;
• methods to assess and predict juvenile quality and subsequent performance in commercial on-growing or the natural environment.

The Session will be of interest to commercial aquaculturists, government scientists involved in stock enhancement programmes, and academicians.

Conveners:
Jackie Doyle
Arno Isaksson
Terje Svåsand

Salmon Stocks are threatened, and in certain areas they are outside safe biological limits. Although many factors contribute to this development, it has been suggested that increased farming activity of Atlantic salmon could be playing an important part in the decline of wild salmon stocks. Supplementary releases of fry and smolts as well as ranching activity have also come under serious scrutiny as such stockings have not always proven successful in increasing salmon abundance.

The total world wide production of farmed Atlantic salmon was close to 700,000 tons in 2000 compared to a total catch of ca. 2.800 tons of wild Atlantic salmon. Norwegian data indicate that 452,000 salmon escaped from farms in 1999, and salmon of farmed origin account for approximately 20 % of wild Norwegian catches. Furthermore, the incidence of farmed salmon in spawning populations is high in some Norwegian rivers, which may possibly lead to irreversible changes in genetic structure. Similar development has been observed in many countries bordering the Atlantic.

Farmed salmon are also regarded as a potential vector for diseases and parasites. There are indications that salmon lice could be an important factor in determining the level of marine mortality of post smolts leaving the river. Introductions and transfers of salmonids have also had serious repercussions as borne out by the total loss of salmon in some Norwegian rivers as a result of infection by the parasitic fluke Gyrodactylus salaris imported with salmon smolts from the Baltic in the 1970s.

In order to address the above issues, papers and posters are invited which address interactions between stocks of wild, enhanced, ranched and farmed salmon with special focus on genetical, ecological, parasitic and disease impacts on wild salmon stocks. Contributions which address the following specific topics are particularly welcome:

• Survival and behaviour of cage reared escapees as well as ranched Atlantic or Pacific salmon.
• Ecological effects of escaped farmed salmon on the reproductive success of wild salmon.
• The gene flow between escaped farmed salmon as well those from enhancement and wild stocks, and their potential effects on genetic diversity and survival of wild salmon.
• Salmon lice: the influence of farming activity on the infection rate of wild salmonids.
  

Conveners:
Michael Hansen
Einar Eg Nielsen
Sheila Stiles

The past few years have witnessed accelerating developments in genetics, including both the use of biotechnology and Bayesian- and Markov Chain Monte Carlo-based statistical methods in population genetics and in aquaculture.

For instance, in population genetics methods are now available that allow for determining the population of origin single individuals and for assessing whether individuals have ancestors from different populations. These methods could be of particular use in forensics, for assessing the genetic impact of farmed fish on wild populations, and in ecological studies, i.e., following the drift of larvae from different populations. Other developments include methods for determining demographic parameters, including expansion or decline of populations. On a general level, microsatellite DNA markers have now, in several cases, demonstrated weak but statistically significant genetic differentiation in marine fishes, which is of obvious interest in the management of populations.

In aquaculture genetics marker-assisted selective breeding programmes have now been implemented in several cases. In the near future, it is also expected that this area will benefit from developments in genomics. Other developments may be addressed such as the use of polyploids and GMOs in aquaculture, considered both from a production and an environmental perspective.

Contributions are particularly welcome that address the new and vastly improved possibilities for integrating population genetics in fisheries management and for improving aquaculture production, but also will consider problems, pitfalls, and environmental issues connected to these developments.

Conveners:
Mike Breen
Alain Fréchet
Aud Vold Soldal

For the effective management of any fishery, the overall mortality associated with that exploited population of fish should be fully understood. This is essential if the state of the exploited stock is to be properly monitored, so that accurate and meaningful decisions about the future of that fishery can be made. Deaths occurring in the population of an exploited species will consist of two components: natural (M) and fishing mortality (F).

The ICES Study Group on Unaccounted Mortality in Fisheries (1995) defined Fishing Mortality (F) as >The sum of all fishing induced mortalities occurring directly as a result of catch or indirectly as a result of contact with or avoidance of the fishing gear.= They further recognised definable sub-components of F, were mortality may result from: illegal, misreported, and unreported landings; discarding; ghost fishing; habitat degradation; and, escaping, avoiding or dropping out of fishing gear.

Over the last decade, there has been considerable new and innovative research into identifying and estimating unaccounted sources of mortality in fisheries. However, as it has been pointed out in many instances, this area of research still needs to be better understood by researchers, managers, and industry. This Session will review current knowledge and estimates of these "unaccounted mortalities", consider methods of incorporating such estimates into assessments and discuss research priorities.

Presentations are invited on the following subject areas:

• discard mortality;
• illegal landings and mis-reporting;
• mortality of fish escaping from fishing gear;
• ghost fishing;
• stock mortality induced by environmental degradation
• theoretical and practical limitations to mortality estimation; and
• incorporating mortality estimates in stock assessment models and the fisheries management process.

It is hoped that this will stimulate further work by highlighting the importance of unaccounted mortality issues to gear technologists, stock assessment biologists and fisheries managers.

Conveners:
Glen Harrison
Bill Turrell
Thomas C. Malone

A major challenge in the coming years is to incorporate environmental parameters and their assessment into management protocols applied to commercial fisheries and the marine environment. The move towards an "ecosystem approach" in both fishery and environmental management will require the routine delivery of well-tailored specific products derived from comprehensive and rigorous environmental assessment and monitoring. Such monitoring in the 21st century may involve synoptic observations of physical, chemical, and biological variables with data streams that are operationally linked with process models to provide timely and skilful predictions of such important statistics as sustainable fish yields. Questions which arise include:

• What key processes or properties should be monitored in regional operational oceanographic observing systems that are relevant to fisheries and environmental management? To what extent should the monitoring of environmental variables (including the spatial extent and condition of critical habitat) be synoptic in time and space with fisheries observations, e.g., stock assessments?
• What form should this monitoring take? What are the required time and space scales of observation? What technologies will be needed (measurements and platforms)?
• What products will be required by fishery and environmental managers? To what extent do these products need to be provided in near real-time, i.e., what are the acceptable time lags between sampling or measurement and the availability of the product? How will models have to be improved to function in an operational mode?
• What are the requirements and mechanisms for transitioning current research and monitoring activities into an operational framework?
• Is the development of such an operational ecosystem approach to fisheries and environmental management realistic?

The ICES-IOC Steering Group on GOOS is already contemplating these questions, and attempting to formulate a policy for ICES in order that it maintains a leading role in the science of fishery and environmental management. Oceanographers and managers from all relevant disciplines are invited to contribute to this debate, in order to help build a consensus view of how to proceed towards providing the new tools for management in the coming decade.

Conveners:
Ketil Hylland Thomas Lang
John Thain

A series of seven Sea-Going Workshops on Biological Effects of Contaminants in Pelagic Ecosystems was held during 2001 in the North Sea, mainly in the German Bight and Statfjord areas. This represented one of the largest international research activities in the field of biological effects to be conducted so far.

The main objectives of the Workshops were to bring together specialists for practical work aiming at the identification and assessment of methods to detect biological effects of contaminants in pelagic organisms that may be used for routine monitoring purposes. There is increasing evidence for contaminant effects on pelagic organisms and there is therefore a need to study and monitor possible impacts, especially as current biological effects and monitoring programmes have been restricted to benthic habitats. Besides field sampling of pelagic organisms (fish embryos, larvae, and adults as well as bacteria, phyto-, and zooplankton), exposure experiments with cod and blue mussels were carried out on a contaminant gradient in each of the two main study areas. Accompanying measurements included chemical analysis of tissue and water extracts and hydrographic measurements and modelling.

Contributions are invited which address studies carried out in the framework of these workshops. Contributions describing similar activities carried out outside of the framework of these workshops are also welcome.

The Effects of Fishing on the Genetic Composition of Living Marine Resources
(Session Y) Timetable

Conveners:
Olav Rune Godø
Adriaan Rijnsdorp
Ulf Dieckmann
Mikko Heino

The subject of this Theme Session is based on an on-going international project led by IIASA (International Institute for Applied System Analysis).

The literature is replete with evidence for the effects of high and selective fishing pressure on population abundance and composition and on other characteristics like growth and age at maturation. The evidence on long-term effects of fishing on the genetic composition of stocks has until now been quite vague, particularly because the methodology to study the problem has been poorly developed. Nevertheless, taking into account the number of depleted and overexploited fish populations, and the increasing extent of time-series of scientific data, and recent methodological developments, the time is thought to be mature for a theme session on this issue. The main objective of the Session is to review the evidence from available long time-series as well as to see what insight is available from modelling approaches to resolve the problem. Important scientific questions are:

• Are the high exploitation pressures presently experienced by many stocks eroding their genetic composition?
• How can analyses of long time-series help to elucidate the problem?
• What methods and results, empirical as well as theoretical, are available to tackle these questions?
• Should these considerations impact on current management practices?