Report of the Working Group on Biology and Assessment of Deep-sea Fisheries Resources (WGDEEP). 14–20 March 2013, Copenhagen, Denmark

WGDEEP met at ICES Headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark on 14–20 March 2013. The group was chaired by Tom Blasdale from the UK. Terms of Reference of the Working Group are given in Section 2. For all of the stocks assessed by WGDEEP, 2013 was the second year in a biennial advice schedule, meaning that no new advice was required this year. Available timeseries for international landings and discards, fishing effort, survey indices and biological information were updated and for all stocks and are presented in Sections 4 to 14 of the report. For some fisheries, significant discrepancies were found between official landings data supplied to ICES and scientific estimates of catches. In order to maintain the consistency of time-series (which previously used only scientific estimates), some landings have been included in the data tables as “unallocated landing” (see Section 2.2). The working group evaluated the harvest control rule (HCR)for data-limited stocks developed by WKLIFE2, providing generic commentary on the application of the HCR to deep-water stocks in the ICES area and specific comments on the application of the HCR in the 2012 advisory process with respect to specific stocks assessed by WGDEEP. To further develop methods to provide quantitative advice consistent with the MSY framework, WGDEEP has applied a new approach to Productivity Susceptibility Analysis (PSA) using orange roughy stocks to the west of the British Isles as a case study (Chapter 15). In response to a request from the NEAFC, the working group update descriptions of deep-water fisheries in the NEAFC and ICES areas by compiling data on catch/landings, fishing effort and known spawning areas and areas of local depletion at the finest spatial resolution possible by ICES subarea and division (Chapter 16). The working group considered the timing and frequency of management advice for deep-water stocks taking into consideration recommendations previously made by ICES Workshop on Frequency of Assessments 2012 (WKFREQ) and the Deepfishman project. WGDEEP’s recommendations are presented in Chapter 17