Hypothesis and objectives

The underlying hypothesis of the project is that facing up with the identified stock assessment issues of the Spanish North West Atlantic species could substantially improve their fisheries management. Within this context, the overarching goal of IMPRESS is to improve the scientific advice quality for fisheries management of resources of interest for Spanish fleets in the North West Atlantic. To achieve this goal the IMPRESS project will apply a sequential analysis following step by step the assessment process from the stock identification of the available data to the simulation and evaluation of management strategies. Each step of the assessment process will be applied to one or more stocks of the 4 different Cases of Study (CS) identified:

• Pelagic CS include sardine (Sardina pilchardus), anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) and Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus);
• Data-limited CS (fish, elasmobranchs, cephalopods and crustacean species);
• Mixed-fishery CS (that combines different stocks of the same fishery);

• Demersal CS includes European hake (Merluccius merluccius), monkfish (Lophius piscatorius and L. budegassa), megrims (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis and L. boscii).

To achieve this main goal IMPRESS has identified 4 more specific objectives:

• identify current knowledge gaps and incorporate them in the assessment process.
• increase the number of stock assessed under quality criteria considering the precautionary approach and MSY.
• improve the predictive power of existing stock assessment models.

• identify and evaluate management strategies that allows improving the system productivity and, at the same time, guaranties their sustainability.