The workshop will address the following:
a ) has the goal of assessing the usefulnes of the maturity scale agreed in 2011 and the conversion to and from other scales used in the different labs/institutes;
b ) to validate the criteria and descriptions to classify maturity stages of the 2011 scale which takes into account the difficulties and / or inconsistencies of the maturity scales in use in different labs;
c ) to calibrate staging of herring and sprat using fresh fish between the different laboratories;
d ) to calibrate staging of herring and sprat following the pattern of trial-discussion-retrial using photographs, following the pattern of trial-discussion-retrial;
e ) to validate with histological analysis the macroscopic maturity stage, mainly the resting stages that are incorrectly classified as immature.
f ) to address the generic ToRs adopted for maturity staging workshops (see 'WGBIOP Guidelines for Workshops on Maturity Staging').
