The Mediterranean and Black Sea STECF Stock Assessment Database - SAMBS

Field: Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)

Since 2007, the Scientific Technical Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF), for which Joint Research Centre (JRC) runs the Secretariat and all the data collection process, started collecting and organizing information on Mediterranean and Black Sea fisheries, and since 2009 performing standardized stock assessments on these fisheries during STECF expert working groups (EWGs).\nThe stock assessment results have been documented in more than 30 reports STECF EWGs (https://stecf.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reports/medbs).\nStock assessments performed during the STECF EWGs employ different approaches and tools, however, models implemented in the Fisheries Libraries in R (FLR, http://www.flr-project.org) were the most used.\nAfter almost 10 years of stock assessments in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, JRC extracted available stock assessment data from digital repositories of EWGs and compiled a STECF reference database.\nFrom each assessment contained in the STECF reports yearly time series of stock variables such as:Total Catch (total weight of all fish in the stock), Recruitment (total number of individuals entering yearly in the population), Spawning Stock Biomass (total weight of all sexually mature fish in the stock) and Fishing Mortality were extracted.\nThe assessments data are made available through an online interactive dashboard under the STECF Data dissemination web page (https://stecf.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dd/medbs/ram) that allow readers to compare and contrast several stock assessments variables. Each stock assessment is linked via an URL to the original source of the stock assessment.\nAccording to EU CFP - Common Fisheries Policy (Reg. EU 1380/2013 and Reg. EU812/2015) all EU commercial fish stocks should be fished at a maximum sustainable yield (Fmsy). Biological reference points, Fref (Fmsy or a proxy as F 0.1 ) and were subsequently used to assess if the level of exploitation (F/Fmsy) is in line with the CFP objectives\n(F/Fmsy≤1) or not (F/Fmsy >1).\nThe STECF database is the reference database for the computation of the Common Fisheries Policy monitoring indicators for the Mediterranean and Black Sea\n(https://stecf.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/43805/2092142/STECF+18-01+adhoc+-+CFP+Monitoring+2018.pdf)\nTo ensure traceability and foster reproducible scientific research, all the data, code and references part of the compilation process are hosted on GitHub, a well-known version control software platform.\nThe target audience of the dashboard ranges from governments, fisheries institutes, stakeholders, NGO’s and common citizens that want to check the status of marine fisheries resources evaluated.\nA copy of the Mediterranean and Black Sea STECF stock assessment results will be included, for the first time, in the next release of the RAM legacy database: a voluntary contributed worldwide stock assessments database, RAM legacy, (http://ramlegacy.org/).\nThe RAM Legacy database includes fish stock assessments from all around the world’s oceans, and provides a unique source of information to make comparisons between fisheries and to perform global analysis of stock status.