The European Commission's “30% by 2030" target aims to introduce spatial measures to protect the seabed. A key question is how we can ensure that spatial measures are located in the correct place maximizing ecological and socio-economic aims. In addressing this question, it is useful to determine the likely consequences on fisheries across various scenarios within the overlying 30 by 30 management objective.
In 2021, ICES provided the European Commission with advice on management scenarios to reduce mobile bottom-fishing disturbance to seabed habitats. This advice comprised a series of interactive maps and tables for many EU regions, showing how the management scenarios would affect the fisheries revenues. A key purpose of the advice was to establish scientifically sound threshold values to assess seabed habitat quality under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
The European Commission requested ICES to update its 2021 advice, using the latest data. The 2021 ICES advice to the European Commission only included areas for which data was available (Baltic Sea, Celtic Seas, greater North Sea and Bay of Biscay & Iberian Coast). The focus was be to operationalize the assessment for many of the regions in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Outcomes of previous ICES workshops WKSSFGEO2, WKD6STAKE, and WKTRADE4 are incorporated as well, to improve the assessment procedure.
A transparent and reproducible procedure
WKD6ASSESS is organized to run the 2021 assessment procedure using available scripts with new data, and to ensure that the routine is repeatable by applying the ICES TAF principles in the development and documentation of the code. These scripts will be aligned as far as possible with that of the impact assessments run by WGFBIT, to ensure the procedure is rooted within an ICES expert group.
In addition to incorporating improvements, running the assessment with the latest data, and the coordination of result interpretation, WKD6ASSESS aimed to include information on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the assessment. That way, a similar assessment of the various fishing activities, their impacts and revenues can be performed within and around MPAs, facilitating management scenarios. To this end, WKD6ASSESS makes use of EU-funded projects (e.g. SEAwise, MAPAFISH, and MAPAFISH MED) that recently reviewed fisheries restriction measures that are currently in place for MPAs in EU (and UK) waters.
