Sound assessment
methods are a basic requirement for the provision of sound and credible advice,
and the group has regularly been tasked to address specific problems identified
by ICES stock assessment working groups. WGMG concentrates on methodological
issues not easily addressed within assessment working groups and benchmark
meetings, and therefore does not evaluate case studies in any detail.
Recent activities
included providing strong support for the ICES Strategic Initiative on Stock
Assessment Methods (SISAM) by putting forward a unified proposal for a methods
evaluation scheme, with accompanying data sets, and an initial trial of some
aspects of the evaluation scheme. Future work includes looking at ways to
evaluate management approaches that are consistent with the precautionary and MSY
approaches for all species in a mixed fishery, including data limited ones, and
investigating aspects of the current ICES Data Limited Stocks (DLS) approach.
