1.

For the landings: (a) The Member State on whose territory the first sale take place, shall be responsible for ensuring that biological sampling occurs according to the standards defined in this Community Programme. If necessary, Member States shall cooperate with the authorities of non EU third countries to set up biological sampling programmes for the landings carried out by vessels flying the third country's flag. (b) For sampling purpose, only the major metiers need be considered. In order to identify the metiers to be sampled, the following ranking system shall be used at level 6 of the matrix in Appendix IV (1 to 5) on a national basis by Member States using as reference the average values of the two previous years and: — The metier cells shall first be ranked according to their share in the total commercial landings. The shares are then to be cumulated, starting with the largest, until a cut-off level of 90 % is reached. All metiers belonging to the top 90 % shall be selected for sampling, — The exercise shall then be repeated according to the total value of the commercial landings and repeated a third time according to the total effort in days-at-sea. The metiers in the top 90 % not belonging to the previous top 90 % shall be added to the selection, — STECF may add to the selection the metiers not picked up by the ranking system but of special importance in terms of management. (c) The sampling unit shall be the fishing trip and the number of fishing trips to be sampled shall ensure good coverage of the metier. (d) Precision values and ranking system are referenced at the same level as the sampling programmes, i.e. at the national metier level for data that are collected through national programmes and at regional metier level for data that are collected through regionally coordinated sampling programmes. (e) The sampling intensity shall be proportionate to the relative effort and variability in the catches of that metier. The minimum number of fishing trips to be sampled shall never be less than one fishing trip per month during the fishing season for fishing trips of less than two weeks and one fishing trip per quarter otherwise. (f) When sampling a fishing trip, the species shall be sampled concurrently as follows: — Each species within a region as defined in Appendix II, shall be classified within a group according to the following rules: — Group 1: Species that drive the international management process including species under EU management plans or EU recovery plans or EU long term multiannual plans or EU action plans for conservation and management based on Council Regulation (EC) No 2371/2002 of 20 December 2002 on the conservation and sustainable exploitation of fisheries resources under the common fisheries policy (3), — Group 2: Other internationally regulated species and major non-internationally regulated by-catch species, — Group 3: All other by-catch (fish and shellfish) species. The list of Group 3 species shall be established at the regional level by the relevant regional coordination meeting and agreed by STECF. (g) Allocation of species to Group 1 and 2 is specified in Appendix VII. The choice of the sampling scheme shall depend on the diversity of species to sample and the operational conditions under which sampling takes place. The sampling design per metier must consider both the periodicity of the sampling events and the sampling scheme to apply. Possible sampling schemes, as described in the following table, comprise: — Scheme 1: comprehensive sampling of all species, — Scheme 2: within each time stratum, the sampling events are split in two parts. One part of the sampling events (x %) considers sampling of all species on shore whereas the other part of the sampling events (100-x %) considers only sampling of all Group 1 species, — Scheme 3: within each time stratum, the sampling events are split in two parts. One part of the sampling events (x %) considers sampling of all Group 1 and Group 2 species on shore, whereas the other part of the sampling events (100-x %) considers only sampling of Group 1 species. In this scheme, Group 3 species have to be sampled at sea. Table 1 Summary of the schemes to be used for concurrent sampling. Sampling scheme Frequency Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Scheme 1 Every sampling event Scheme 2 x % of sampling events (100-x) % of sampling events Scheme 3 x % of sampling events Sampling at sea (100-x) % of sampling events (h) For any given sample, the sampling scheme shall be recorded (Table 1) along with information on how complete the sampling is: — When sampling a species, the number of individuals measured must ensure quality and accuracy of resultant length frequency. The number of length classes within a sample may be estimated from the approximate length range within it and, from this, the number of fish measured shall lie between 3 × number of length classes and 5 × number of length classes as a first approximation, in the absence of any statistical optimisation of the sampling design. (i) Other sampling procedures could be used on the condition that there is scientific evidence showing that these procedures will achieve the same objectives as the ones described in point 3(1)(g). (j) A summary of the sampling protocols carried out by Member States shall be made available to STECF through the national programmes for each metier sampled.