ICES WGHIST REPORT 2016 SCICOM STEERING GROUP ON ECOSYSTEM PRESSURES AND IMPACTS

ICES CM 2016/SSGEPI:20

REF. SCICOM

Interim Report of the Working Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (WGHIST)

6-9 September 2016

ICES Headquarters, Copenhagen, Denmark

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Recommended format for purposes of citation:

ICES. 2017. Interim Report of the Working Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (WGHIST), 6–9 September 2016, ICES Headquarters, Copenhagen, Denmark. ICES CM 2016/SSGEPI:20. 51 pp.

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The document is a report of an Expert Group under the auspices of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and does not necessarily represent the views of the Council.

© 2017 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea

ICES WGHIST REPORT 2016 | i

Contents

Executive summary ................................................................................................................ 2

1 Administrative details .................................................................................................. 3

2 Terms of Reference a) – z) ............................................................................................ 3

3 Summary of Work plan ................................................................................................ 3

4 List of Outcomes and Achievements of the WG in this delivery period ............ 4

5 Progress report on ToRs and workplan ..................................................................... 6

6 Revisions to the work plan and justification ......................................................... 13

7 Final meeting ................................................................................................................ 13

Annex 1: List of participants............................................................................................... 14

Annex 2: Summaries of presented work and group discussion .................................. 16

Annex 3: Collaboration with Oceans Past Platform (OPP) ........................................... 47

Annex 4: Recommendations ............................................................................................... 49

Annex 5: Metadata prepared for proposal on stock assessment workshop ............... 50

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Executive summary

The ICES Working Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (WGHIST) is a forum for interdisciplinary research on social-ecological change in marine and fisheries systems over multi-decadal to centennial timescales. It comprises a diverse group of researchers, including marine biologists, fisheries scientists, historians, and historical ecologists, from Europe and North America, as well as Australia, Russia, and South Africa.

The 2016 meeting was the second year of the WGHIST current 3-year term. The meeting was held at the ICES HQ, Copenhagen, Denmark, on 6–9 September 2016, chaired by Emily Klein (USA) and Ruth Thurstan (Australia). As in 2015, this was a joint meeting with Working Group 1 of the EU-COST Oceans Past Platform (OPP). 18 participants at-tended in person, representing 17 institutions across 10 countries in Europe, North Amer-ica, and Australia. Five participants attended remotely via WebEx for parts of the meeting.

During the year leading up to the 2016 meeting, WGHIST engaged with the ICES com-munity via online articles, at the ASC, and through social media activity. Several papers and book chapters by group members, or which benefited from discussions or collabora-tions developed at previous WGHIST meetings, were also published. During the 2016 meeting, collaborative work related to WGHIST Terms of Reference was progressed, with two consequent group manuscripts currently in preparation. WGHIST members also possess a wealth of long-term data useful for understanding marine social-ecological systems through time. Throughout 2016, WGHIST chairs worked with the ICES Data Centre to integrate an existing metadatabase of this information into the online ICES Data Portal, and the resulting searchable addition to the Portal was reviewed by WGHIST participants and feedback provided during the 2016 meeting. In the coming year, the Chairs and the Data Centre will work to incorporate this feedback, with plans to make the historical metadata available online to the ICES community during 2017. Finally, dur-ing the meeting, WGHIST continued discussions on potential avenues for engagement with the ICES community, focusing on applying historical data to current science and management needs. These resulted in: 1) submission of a draft resolution to SCICOM to hold a workshop with WGHIST participants and ICES stock assessment scientists, with the aim to integrate historical data into stock assessment; and 2) discussions with the ICES Strategic Initiative on Human Dimensions, aiming to identifying areas of mutual interest and opportunities for collaborative projects during 2017.

The 2016 meeting also included presentations of proposed, current, and completed re-search, and focused on forwarding progress on the WGHIST ToRs. Discussions were centred around four themes:

1 ) Case studies in historical marine ecology, application to management and pol-icy (ToR a);

2 ) Data rescue, digitization, and future development (ToR b); 3 ) Novel and non-traditional data sources and analytical approaches (ToR c); 4 ) Human dimensions of marine ecosystems through time (ToR d).

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1 Administrative details

Working Group name

Working Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (WGHIST)

Year of Appointment

2015

Reporting year within current cycle (1, 2 or 3)

2

Chair(s)

Emily Klein, USA

Ruth Thurstan, Australia

Meeting venue

ICES HQ, Copenhagen, Denmark

Meeting dates

6–9 September 2016

2 Terms of Reference a) – z)

a ) Use case studies to demonstrate the tangible benefit of marine historical ecolo-gy to current marine policy and management

b ) Ensure that quality-assured historical metadata are accessible to the science community to stimulate data products including digital applications

c ) Integrate non-traditional methodologies and data sources to improve our knowledge base on long-term changes

d ) Address social, cultural and economic dimensions of marine ecosystem goods and services through time with the aim to contribute to integrated ecosystem assessments

3 Summary of Work plan

Year 1 The priority for Year 1 was to 1) summarize potential and actual approaches and challenges to the application of historical marine ecology for contemporary science and management via case studies of work within WGHIST (already initiated by Engelhard et al. (2016)1, which resulted from WGHIST 2011-2014); and 2) highlight the process of ac-cessing and applying historical data to science and management questions by identifying

1 Engelhard et al. (2015) ICES meets marine historical ecology: Placing the history of fish and fisher-ies in current policy context. ICES Journal of Marine Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsv219

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regional-level North Atlantic case studies where historical data (both quantitative and qualitative) has already been developed and analyzed for results readily applicable to ICES Science Plan objectives (see ToR(a)). In addition, the WGHIST 2015 meeting includ-ed a Special Session on Human Dimensions, which focused on interactions of human communities with marine ecosystems through time.

Year 2 Year 2 focused on the inclusion of participants from management and policy spheres to identify areas where historical data can be explicitly incorporated into the decision-making process, and how to overcome potential challenges to doing so. To this end, WGHIST invited participants from the ICES community during the year leading up to the 2016 meeting. In addition, WGHIST furthered aims under the Special Session on Human Dimensions (Year 1), which included several presentations at the 2016 meeting as well as a presentation from the chair of ICES SIHD. WGHIST also updated work on case studies identified in Year 1. Finally in 2016, WGHIST met with Data Centre and DIG staff to implement and review avenues for ensuring its availability in the ICES data portal, and discuss further digital applications of this work.

Year 3 The final year of this iteration of WGHIST will draw together the findings from the WGHIST and participants from broader management/policy spheres. We will present a report on how historical data could be explicitly incorporated into current management frameworks (e.g., IEA), drawing on experience from included case studies of WGHIST participant research. Members of WGHIST will work to present recommendations for how future decision-making frameworks may use historical data, including inputs for human dimensions. Deliverables include manuscripts on (1) the assessment of shifting baselines in international policy, and (2) historical lessons for marine policies pertaining to ‘blue growth’. WGHIST will also complete all data products developed in Year 2 with ICES Data Centre and DIG. Finally, WGHIST will perform a self evaluation and solicit recommendations from participants, to be included in the final report.

4 List of Outcomes and Achievements of the WG in this delivery period

The WGHIST meeting represents an opportunity for researchers from different disci-plines and countries to come together to discuss and gain feedback on their research, and to pursue new or on-going collaborations. In 2016, the following scientific papers and book chapters were published which benefited or resulted from discussion or collabora-tions developed during previous WGHIST meetings and correspondence:

• Alleway HK, Thurstan RH, Lauer PR, Connell SD (2016) Incorporating histori-cal data into aquaculture planning. ICES Journal of Marine Science 73: 1427-1436.

• Fortibuoni T, Borme D, Franceschini G, Giovanardi O, Raicevich S (2016). Common, rare or extirpated? Shifting baselines for common angelshark, Squatina squatina (Elasmobranchii: Squatinidae), in the Northern Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea). Hydrobiologia 772: 247-259 doi:10.1007/s10750-016-2671-4.

• Klein ES, Thurstan RH (2016) “Acknowledging long-term ecological change: the problem of shifting baselines” in Perspectives on Oceans Past. K. Schwedtner Máñez and B. Poulsen, eds. Springer Netherlands. p. 11-29.

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• Klein ES, Glaser SM, Jordaan A, Kaufman L, Rosenberg AA (2016) A complex past: historical and contemporary fisheries demonstrate nonlinear dynamics and a loss of determinism. Marine Ecology Progress Series 557: 237-246. (doi: 10.3354/meps11886). Available open access at http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v557/p237-246/.

• Sguotti C, Lynam CP, García-Carreras B, Ellis JR, Engelhard GH (2016) Distri-bution of skates and sharks in the North Sea: 112 years of change. Global Change Biology 22: 2729–2743. doi:10.1111/gcb.13316.

• Thurstan RH, Buckley SM, Ortiz JC, Pandolfi JM (2016) Setting the record straight: assessing the reliability of retrospective accounts of change. Conserva-tion Letters 9: 98-105. doi:10.1111/conl.12184.

• Usseglio, P, Friedlander AM, Koike H, Zimmerhackel J, Schuhbauer A, Eddy T, and Salina-de-Leon P (2016). So long and thanks for all the fish: Overexploi-tation of the regional endemic Galapagos Grouper Mycteroperca olfax (Jenyns, 1840). PLOS One. 11(10): e0165167. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0165167.

WGHIST also aims to maintain quality metadata on sources of historical and long-term data, and to develop related digital tools (ToR b). At the 2016 meeting, the existing WGHIST metadata was updated and reviewed by WGHIST members. In addition, dur-ing 2016, WGHIST chairs worked with the ICES Data Centre to transfer this metadata to the ICES Data Portal, making the metadata more widely available to the ICES community and beyond. The resulting searchable database on the Portal was reviewed but WGHIST participants at the 2016 meeting, and feedback from the group provided. WGHIST chairs have since worked with Data Centre staff to address feedback, and the WGHIST metada-ta will go live on the Portal in early 2017, allowing those outside the WGHIST communi-ty to search available sources on historical and long-term data. Further online digital tools are being developed to continue the WGHIST commitment for quality-assured and accessible resources (more in Annex 2).

In addition, during this delivery period, WGHIST has remained engaged with ICES and the scientific community more broadly. The co-chairs were invited to write a Feature Arti-cle for ICES News (“Changing perceptions”, May 20162), and WGHIST research was also tapped for a news article in late 2015 (“Charting the past to make sense of the present”, December 20153). This second work was a direct result of social media activity during the 2015 meeting, and WGHIST participants continue to use social media and other plat-forms to engage with the scientific community and public under the hashtag #WGHIST. Finally, co-chair Thurstan presented on themes related to changing marine ecosystems at an Open Science session on the interactive effects of human drivers, organised by Henn Ojaveer during the 2016 ICES ASC.

2http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/news-archive/news/Pages/FEATURE-ARTICLE-%E2%80%93-changing-perceptions-.aspx 3http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/news-archive/news/Pages/Charting-the-past-to-make-sense-of-the-present.aspx

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5 Progress report on ToRs and workplan

The 2016 meeting focused on presentations of current and completed research, as well as discussions regarding the WGHIST ToRs and next steps. Presentations and discussion outcomes were organized into the following themes:

1 ) Case studies in historical marine ecology, application to management and pol-icy (ToR a);

2 ) Data rescue, digitization, and future development (ToR b); 3 ) Novel and non-traditional data sources and analytical approaches (ToR c); 4 ) Human dimensions of marine ecosystems through time (ToR d).

Summaries of these themes and associated work are provided in this report, with full descriptions of each of the listed works in Annex 2. Collectively, research and projects discussed covered temporal periods from 1970s fishery statistics to fossil and palaeoeco-logical records, and expanded beyond traditional ICES areas to investigations of global policy initiatives. WGHIST members themselves also span a diversity of disciplines, from fisheries scientists to historians to palaeoecologists, and employ a correspondingly wide range of data sources and methodologies. Consequently, the scope of discussions and research done by WGHIST members is extensive and varied, yet participants eagerly come together under a shared interest in interdisciplinary work to better understand changing marine resources and reliant human communities, and provide advice and insight to management and decision makers. Discussions at the 2016 were lively and productive, with multiple tangible outcomes identified and enthusiastic engagement among members participating in person and remotely.

Theme 1: Case studies in historical marine ecology and fisheries and their applica-tion to current management and policy (ToR a)

Under this theme, attendees shared completed and ongoing marine historical ecology and fisheries research, including updates to several case studies identified in Year 1. These case studies offer specific examples highlighting the potential application of the marine historical research to management and policy, and such application was further discussed by the group. This year, work under this theme represented both (1) specific examples of applicable research, as well as (2) the development of advice regarding the use and importance of historical work for management and policy more broadly.

(1) To the first set of case studies offering specific examples, the work of MacKenzie and Ojaveer on autumn herring in the Gulf of Riga demonstrates using long-term data sources to study how reference points necessary for stock assessment, such as fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass, change through time, and how this study can provide better baselines and understanding of current stock health. Sguotti et al. (a)’s research shows how historical data can inform shifts in species assemblages over time, as well as the drivers behind those shifts. Such information is critical for understanding change in economically valuable species complexes and for the conservation of marine biodiversity. Rijnsdorp et al. updated the group on continued work to illuminate gear and technological change. This work uses compiled data from multiple disciplines (ar-chaeological, historical, geological) to document the spatial evolution and intensification of demersal trawling footprints throughout the North Sea as trawling technology

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evolved. Engelhard et al. used historical datasets housed at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science to confirm that squid, a species of growing commercial importance for UK fisheries, has substantially increased in abundance over the last two decades, and that this increase is partly driven by changes in climate. Thorpe et al. used historical fisheries datasets to retrospectively examine the impacts of management deci-sions on North Sea roundfish communities over a 40-year period.

(2) In addition to these specific examples, work by WGHIST members also aims to pro-vide advice on the importance of historical work to management and policy more broad-ly. Case study examples of this goal include Caswell et al.’s work, which illustrates how research in deep time can provide insight on natural variability, responses to environ-mental change, and the resilience of past marine communities prior to human influence. Results of such work can elucidate potential changes and resilience in the future, infor-mation helpful for current decision makers, especially under climate change. Sguotti et al. (b) are in the early stages of exploring the potential for historical time series to pro-vide an early warning system to aid detection of regime shifts.

Also under this second goal, several group manuscripts are under development, to be completed in Year 3, and were furthered at the 2016 meeting. First, Raicevich et al.’s project aims to understand whether the shifting baselines syndrome4 is addressed in international policy, and the outcomes of this. Second, group work continued on the op-portunities and challenges of engaging historical ecology more broadly. Third, interest-ed WGHIST participants outlined a project looking to leverage historical understanding of human-natural systems for lessons to inform policies around ‘blue growth’ (this pro-ject is further detailed under Theme 4). All three are expected to culminate in manu-scripts submitted for peer-reviewed publication.

Group discussion also resulted in developing a proposal for a joint workshop between WGHIST members and ICES stock assessment scientists to employ historical data for expanding the temporal reach of baselines and reference points used in stock assessment (Sguotti et al. (c)). A break-out group of interested participants developed an Excel spreadsheet for WGHIST participants to provide metadata on the historical information they had in hand and therefore determine if enough data of sufficient quality and detail was available for such a workshop. In the weeks following the meeting, WGHIST mem-bers responded to the call to provide information about data in hand, and demonstrated that interest and resources were available for the workshop (summary of metadata in Annex 5). A proposal for this workshop is currently under development and will be submitted to ICES for consideration.

Finally, in presenting the case studies under this theme, attendees explained the data sources they used and their methodological approaches and analyses. These highlighted some of the non-traditional resources and tools used by the group, and methods of inte-grating disparate historical data sources to improve our current knowledge base on long-term changes (ToR c), and this is further discussed in Theme 3.

4 Pauly, D. 1995. "Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries." Trends in ecology and evolution 10(10): 430.

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(1) Specific case studies

MacKenzie B.R. and Ojaveer H.* Uncovering the past dynamics of a collapsed fish stock: Gulf of Riga autumn-spawning herring.

Sguotti C., et al. (a) Distribution of North Sea skates and sharks: 112 years of change.

Rjinsdorp A., et al.* The evolution of bottom trawling impact on the benthic ecosystem (and de-mersal fish populations)

Engelhard G.H., et al. Squid as winners of climate change.

Thorpe R.B., et al. A 40-year retrospective on the management of the North Sea roundfish commu-nity.

(2) Development of broad management and policy advice

Caswell B.A. Marine ecosystem change in deep time: Implications for current science and man-agement.

Sguotti C., et al. (b) Using historical data to detect the proximity of a system to a regime shift.

Raicevich S., et al.* The shifting baseline syndrome in global marine ecosystem management.

WGHIST participants.* Challenges and limitations to the application of marine historical ecology.

Sguotti S., et al. (c) Proposal for historical data and stock assessment workshop.

Case studies designated by (*) represent continuing work identified in Year 1.

Theme 2: Data rescue, digitization, and future development (ToR b)

Guest Periklis Panagiotidis from the ICES Data Centre attended discussions and present-ed on the integration of the WGHIST metadata with the ICES Data Portal. The metadata has been uploaded to the Data Portal, and WGHIST participants took time to review it for errors as well as provide feedback on the presentation. That feedback is currently being addressed by the co-chairs and ICES staff, with the historical metadata to be pub-lished in early 2017. More information in Annex 2.

Also discussed were potential ways to further advance ToR b) in Year 3, in particular the engagement of WGHIST metadata in the ICES Spatial Facility. This would further high-light the existence of historical datasets to users of ICES data and deepen the wealth of knowledge available via existing ICES tools. Chairs will continue to discuss these options with the ICES Data Center and DIG, and anticipate completion of this work in 2017.

Finally, it was again noted that WGHIST does not (and will not in the near future) have the ability to hold raw datasets, only metadata. However, for individuals who wish to make their data available, several options are available. Fortibuoni et al. highlights the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet), an open access online database which assembles marine data, products and metadata with the aim to make these resources publicly available. Another online repository that exists specifically for archived historical databases is the History of Marine Animal Populations database, hosted by the University of Hull:

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(https://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:HMAPDisplaySet), while international reposito-ries also exist for archiving of unstructured (e.g., the Dryad Digital Repository, http://datadryad.org) or qualitative (e.g., the Qualitative Data Repository, https://qdr.syr.edu) datasets.

Update on WGHIST metadata on historical sources and digital tools. WGHIST members and ICES Digi-tal Information Group.

Fortibuoni T., et al. Historical data on fish and fisheries in the Adriatic Sea.

Theme 3: Novel and non-traditional data sources and analytical approaches (ToR c)

Members of WGHIST span a range of disciplinary backgrounds, and many work with sources and approaches not traditionally used in marine science and management. The membership is thus well versed in using transdisciplinary and creative methods to inter-pret information over multi-decadal and centennial timescales, and linking quantitative and qualitative methods at appropriate spatial and temporal scales. ToR c) aims to sum-marise existing marine historical ecology research in this area, and highlight alternative tools and methods for examining past ecosystems and socio-ecological trends over time.

During the 2016 meeting, attendees emphasised data sources and analytical approaches they use that are not commonly integrated into management, but which potentially pro-vide useful information on societal trends, how our interactions with marine environ-ments have changed over time, and past ecosystem states. Sources currently being explored by WGHIST members include socio-economic records (e.g., tax records, gov-ernment subsidies), historical narratives (e.g., newspapers, natural history books, recrea-tional fishing club bulletins, government records, fishermen interviews, videos), palaeoecological records, and local knowledge (e.g., from fishers and divers). Holm col-lated tax and customs records to estimate total fish landings, fishing effort, and the eco-nomic value of the catches in southwest Denmark in the period 1550–1650. Caswell et al. uses records on fossil data (field collections, archived museum specimens, or published datasets) to provide pre-human ecological baselines and address questions about natural variability of ecosystems in the absence of anthropogenic perturbation. Sagué is examin-ing annual recreational fishing club bulletins to explore changes in the species targeted and numbers caught by recreational spear-fishers over the past 70 years, as well as envi-ronmental changes witnessed by these fishers over this period. Bennema combines natu-ral history books, scientific papers and newspaper articles from multiple countries to explore the timing and persistence of large tuna observed in the North Sea during the 18th and 19th century. Likewise, Jones uses qualitative information, including governmental documents, to uncover patterns in and the spread of early English and Irish trawling.

Analytical approaches being explored include regime shift assessment, non-linear dy-namics in forage fish stocks, multi-species modelling, and socio-ecological studies. For example, using catch rate time-series for a range of species in the Bay of Fundy, both prior to and post-industrial harvesting, Klein et al. demonstrated that non-linear dynam-ics are an innate feature of this fish community, although heavy fishing had likely un-dermined these dynamics over time, resulting in less predictable fisheries model outputs. Thorpe et al. developed a size-structured model which takes into account both mixed fisheries and multispecies effects, to examine the impacts of management on the North Sea roundfish community across a 40-year period (details under Theme 1).

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These works emphasise the broad range of interests and expertise available through WGHIST members. In addition to this ongoing research, there is an increasing global body of research examining the utility of neglected or unconventional data sources in natural resource management. WGHIST members are currently conducting a literature review of such work with the aim to provide advice to management on the common methodological limitations of such sources, how these limitations can be overcome or accounted for, and the potential gains to be made by the inclusion of such data into sci-ence and management.

Holm P. The Norfish project and a case study of the SW Danish fisheries, c 1550-1605.

Caswell B.A. Marine ecosystem change in deep time: Novel data sources and methodologies.

Sagué O. The APS bulletin: A source for benchmarking Western Mediterranean?

Bennema F. Long-term occurrence of Bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the North Sea.

Jones P. The ‘lost’ history of bottom trawling in England and Ireland, ca. 1400-1850.

Klein E.S., et al. Empirical dynamic modelling and historical data reveal nonlinear dynamics in historical fisheries.

Theme 4: Human dimensions of marine ecosystems through time (ToR d)

For this theme and ToR(d), the 2016 meeting continued discussions under our Special Session on Human Dimensions, and engaged with the ICES Strategic Initiative on Hu-man Dimensions (SIHD), as well as several other presentations via remote access.

Several attendees and guests provided case studies relevant to ToR (d), demonstrating the importance of the human dimension in understanding fishing through time. For ex-ample, Overgaard demonstrated that pre-1800, Dutch fishermen traditionally abided by a system of informal rules, which regulated their fishing activities and spread social bene-fits among the fishing community, in addition to conserving the stock for future genera-tions. After involvement by the government removed many of these informal rules, and as production was made more efficient and new technologies introduced, the social net-works disappeared and concern for future generations of fishers reduced, with implica-tions for fishing communities and fishery access. Poulsen (a) also examined pre-1800 Dutch fisheries, finding that their skills and knowledge when fishing for herring were some of the most sophisticated in Europe at the time, with Dutch harvest dominating the salted herring market during this period. This had a flow-on effect to other North Sea countries, many of whom attempted to imitate the Dutch fishing methods, although with limited success.

Ongoing work on human dimensions was also highlighted by Hentati-Sundberg et al., who showed that government subsidy programs have had a dominating role in creating fishing fleet overcapacity and overexploitation in Swedish fisheries over the last century. This is most likely due to strong re-enforcing feedbacks between the government and fisheries sectors, maintaining the persistence of fisheries policy despite fisheries remain-ing very dynamic. This persistence ultimately led to significant costs for society, includ-ing diminished societal benefits and delayed conservation efforts. McKenzie discussed the importance of having a detailed understanding of fleet behaviour, and the cultural and political contexts of fishing activity through time. He emphasized that such knowledge is necessary for accurate interpretation of catch or effort trends and their sub-

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sequent impact upon fish stocks, as well as for understanding the process by which regu-lations get made, are abided by (or not) and repealed. Finally, Poulsen (b) discussed his recent monograph on the individuals and foreign policy interests that set the agenda for Denmark’s early fisheries investigations in the North Atlantic. These cases show the im-portance of human dimensions (from individual fishers and scientists, to fleet behaviour, to government policy) through time for understanding complex marine social-ecological systems.

During the meeting, the group also discussed ways in which historical or long-term data could be used to forward the inclusion of human dimensions in policy and decision mak-ing. Under this broader advice, WGHIST discussed blue growth concepts currently being promoted through EU and global initiatives, and the potential for historical perspectives to inform these policies as they develop. These discussions resulted in an outline for a future manuscript, which will use case studies to demonstrate lessons from historical policies and practises regarding social, economic and ecological outcomes. A core group of interested attendees from the 2016 meeting is currently working on the draft manu-script. This will be sent to the wider WGHIST group in early 2017 with an invitation for members to contribute in-depth case studies.

Avenues for engagement with the Strategic Initiative on Human Dimensions (SIHD)

In addition, there is excellent potential for WGHIST to support the ICES Strategic Initia-tive on Human Dimensions (SIHD). In 2016, SIHD contacted WGHIST and other ICES working groups by questionnaire, requesting information about the extent to which each group is engaged in activities that integrate human dimensions, whether scientists from disciplines other than natural science are involved in the working group, and how fur-ther linkages could be made. Co-chairs Klein and Thurstan responded to this question-naire, stating that while WGHIST has great potential to provide insight into how human dimensions have changed, the group lacks expertise in how human dimensions are cur-rently used or expected to be used in ICES and marine policy more broadly. WGHIST members also recognise the need to engage with people studying current human dimen-sions of these systems, with whom we can work to make our information and research applicable to managers and decision-makers. We highlighted that social science perspec-tives are lacking within the group, and that this perspective is necessary if we are to bridge gaps between research and management (including stakeholder engagement).

During the WGHIST 2016 meeting, Jörn Schmidt from SIHD joined the discussion re-motely, to (1) provide WGHIST attendees with information about SIHD, and (2) discuss ways in which WGHIST can engage with SIHD in the future. Resulting discussions high-lighted overlapping areas of interest between WGHIST and SIHD, which provide oppor-tunities for that engagement. In addition to complementary goals for understanding the human side of social-ecological systems, both groups are concerned with the use and integration of differing methodologies, and approaches and disciplines that produce new information useful for management. Specifically, both SIHD and WGHIST are interested in exploring how data from the humanities and social sciences can be incorporated into Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs).

Group discussions also raised the similar challenges that SIHD and WGHIST both face, including finding ways to effectively integrate social, humanities and/or historical infor-mation into decision making (e.g., the potential and availability of social, cultural and

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economic indicators/models for this process). While the relevance of the social dimension is not always immediately apparent for tactical advice needs, this may be different stra-tegic initiatives like IEAs. If this is the case, how can we show the advantages/benefits of integrated advice for IEAs? Can a framework be developed that effectively incorporates historical and social data into IEAs? While recognising the value of region-specific or fishery-specific case studies, the group also discussed the value of finding ways to incor-porate the broader perspectives, context and values that emerge from humanities/social studies into management.

Discussion at the meeting also focused on the different types of historical data/expertise available in WGHIST that could potentially be of use to SIHD. For example, provision of historical contexts for aiding understanding of long-term social-ecological trends and linkages, knowledge of past and present social networks for more informed decision making, information on changing community values over time, and the social-ecological drivers behind past regime shifts and how these developed.

It was agreed that WGHIST and SIHD would continue to engage over the coming year and look for opportunities to work together on common areas of interest. One suggested potential way forward advocated setting up a working group with SIHD and WGHIST members, as well as members from other interested ICES working groups, with the aim to develop integrated advice for IEAs that incorporates both social and historical data, using a case study approach. While SIHD currently have one case study underway, this was suggested as a potential opportunity for WGHIST to be involved with SIHD in the future.

Overgaard C. Dutch cod fishing in the North Sea 1818-1911: Information applicable to today’s policy and management?

Poulsen B. (a) Dutch Fishermen the best in Europe for 300 years.

Hentati-Sundberg J., et al. Path dependency in social-ecological systems: Swedish fisheries policy, subsidies, and 100 years of over-fishing

McKenzie M. Understanding fishing communities, their cultural contexts and changing behaviour over time.

Poulsen B. (b) Fishbones and foreign policy – ICES marine science in the North-Western Area, c. 1923-1931.

WGHIST participants. Something old, something new: 200 years of a blue growth agenda.

In addition to presentations and discussions advancing WGHIST ToRs, the meeting was held concurrently with Oceans Past Platform, an EU-COST Initiative, due to overlaps in members, interests, and research. For more on the Oceans Past Platform, please see An-nex 3.

Finally, the Chairs thank ICES for their support in expanding remote access via WebEx for participants who were unable to attend in person. This allowed several WGHIST members to attend sessions and present work, as well as the inclusion of several guest presentations. The Chairs will continue to use remote access to engage more of WGHIST in 2017.

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6 Revisions to the work plan and justification

Not applicable.

7 Final meeting

Year 3 (2017): 5–8 September, Institute of Marine Research, Department of Aquatic Re-sources, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lysekil, Sweden.

Hosts: Max Cardinale and Jonas Hentati-Sundberg.

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Annex 1: List of participants

NAME ADDRESS EMAIL

Emily S. Klein (co-chair) Southwest Fisheries Science Center, 8901 La Jolla Shores Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037-1508, USA Farallon Institute, 101 H Street, Petaluma, CA, 94952, USA

emily.klein04@gmail.com

Ruth H. Thurstan (co-chair)

Centre for Integrative Ecology and School of Life and Environmental Sciences Deakin University, Warrnambool, Victoria, 3280, Australia

r.thurstan@deakin.edu.au

Adriaan Rijnsdorp

Wageningen IMARES, Haringkade 1, Ab Ymuiden, 1950, Netherlands

adriaan.rijnsdorp@wur.nl

Ann-Katrien Lescrauwaet

Flanders Marine Institute, Wandelaarkaai 7, Koksijde, 8670, Belgium

annkatrien.lescrauwaet@vliz.be

Bo Poulsen

Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark

bpoulsen@cgs.aau.dk

Brian MacKenzie

DTU Aqua, Technical University of Denmark, Charlottenlund Castle, Jægersborg Alle 1, Charlottenlund, 2920, Denmark

brm@aqua.dtu.dk

Bryony Caswell

Environmental Futures Research Institute and School of Environment, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, Parklands Drive, Qld 4222, Australia

b.caswell@griffith.edu.au

Camilla Sguotti

University of Hamburg, Institute for Hydrobiology and Fisheries Science, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN), Hamburg, Germany

camilla.sguotti@gmail.com

Christine Overgaard mail@christine.management

Floris Bennema

f.p.bennema@xs4all.nl

Georg Engelhard Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Pakefield Road Lowestoft, NR33 0HT, UK

georg.engelhard@cefas.co.uk

Henn Ojaveer

Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu, Lootsi 2a, Pärnu, 08812, Estonia

henn.ojaveer@ut.ee

Jonas Hentati-Sundberg Institute of Marine Research, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lysekil, Sweden

jonas.sundberg@slu.se

Oscar Sagué International Forum for Sustainable Underwater Activities, Barcelona, Spain

ifsua@ifsua.net

Peter Jones

University of Strathclyde, 1 Allanton Park Terract, Fairlie, KA29 0AW, UK

peter.jones@strath.ac.uk

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Robert Thorpe

Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), Parkefield Road, Lowestoft, NR33 0HT, UK

robert.thorpe@cefas.co.uk

Tomaso Fortibuoni National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, Via Beirut 2/4, 34151 Trieste, Italy. Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research Loc. Brondolo, Chioggia, 30015, Italy

tomaso.fortibuoni@isprambiente.it

Remote attendees:

Sasa Raicevich Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale Loc. Brondolo, Chioggia, 30015, Italy

sasa.raicevich@ispramebiente.it

Adrian Jordaan

Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA 01003–9285, USA

ajordaan@eco.umass.edu

Matthew McKenzie Department of History, University of Connecticut, New Hampshire, USA

Matthew.McKenzie@uconn.edu

Heike Zidowitz heikezidowitz@web.de

Poul Holm

Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland

holmp@tcd.ie

Invited guests:

Ian Stewart, International Pacific Halibut Commission

Jörn Schmidt, ICES SIHD

Mark Dickey-Collas, ICES Secretariat

Periklis Panagiotidis, ICES Secretariat

Arni Magnusson, ICES Secretariat

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Annex 2: Summaries of presented work and group discussion

Theme 1. Case studies in historical marine research and their application to man-agement and policy (ToR a)

Uncovering the past dynamics of a collapsed fish stock: Gulf of Riga autumn-spawning herring

Brian MacKenzie and Henn Ojaveer

To reconstruct the century-scale development of landings and investigate the observed drastic decrease and almost disappearance of autumn herring in the Gulf of Riga, we extracted information from the following sources:

• National fishery journals, 1920s–1930s (Kalandus, and Laevandus ja Kalandus); • Original summary notes from primary sources (from fishing kolhoses during

the soviet time, 1945–1989) from archives of Estonian Marine Institute, Univer-sity of Tartu;

• Official catch statistics from the more recent time was obtained from Ministry of Environment (1992–2005) and Ministry of Rural Affairs (since 2006).

Data on the number of autumn herring spawners caught by age-cohorts formed in years 1951–1971 were available for the Gulf of Riga from archives of Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu. These data include both the offshore trawl and the coastal gill-net/trapnet fishery. We used this information to estimation of instantaneous total and fishing mortality, performed by a catch curve analysis method. We estimated spawning stock biomass (SSB) for the fall spawning stock using two differ-ent methods for different time periods. One method used Gulf of Riga spring herring SSB values combined with the annual average percentage of autumn herring in trawl catches in the Gulf of Riga during March-November. The latter was available for the period of 1957–1961. These data allowed us to estimate autumn herring SSB for these five years only, which correspond to the period of the highest catches in record.

The second method employed the annual estimates of instantaneous fishing mortality and total landings of autumn spawning herring for the period 1951-1969. We converted the instantaneous fishing mortality rates to annual removal rates (Dick and MacCall, 2011) and then estimated total biomass, given the removal rates and total landings (MacCall, 2009; Rosenberg et al., 2014; Walters et al., 2006; Worm et al., 2009).

We then conducted simulations of population dynamics using a standard single-species age-structured model of fish population dynamics to investigate the potential role of fishing on the decline of autumn spawning herring in the Gulf of Riga. This model re-quires several inputs of biological data (weights, maturation probability and natural mor-talities-at-age; numbers at age in the population) and relationships (i.e., stock-recruitment) associated with herring life-history to enable population calculations. Most of these required inputs available for this stock (at least for some years, or for average values over many years), except for the stock-recruitment relationship. In order to have a reasonable approximation for the stock-recruit dynamics, and given the absence of data for parameterising such a model for the autumn spawning stock, we used the stock-

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recruit model for the central basin spring-spawning herring stock of the Baltic Sea, whose ecology most likely resembles that for the autumn herring stock. As the central basin stock-recruitment model applies to a much larger stock, we downscaled its parameters relative to the maximum spawning stock size as estimated historically for the Gulf of Riga autumn spawning stock. We conducted a limited number of scenario simulations for our specific objective, including simulations assuming the status quo fishing mortality (Fsq) as estimated for the historical time period, as well as a scenario involving 1.5 x Fsq.

A few initial results include:

• In most years from 1920 through the 1930s, catches were higher than in the late 1940s and early 1950s after WW II. Landings then increased exponentially and reached peak by the turn of 1950/1960 with a steep and gradual decline after-wards;

• The period from the early 1980s-2005 was characterized by extremely low or no reported landings, but several sources suggest continuous deep depression of the stock, suggesting low stock abundance. More recently, landings were generally very low;

• The percentage of immature fish (calculated by year-class cohorts) in catches was on average over 40%;

• Fishing mortality, calculated by year-class cohorts, exceeded a value of 0.6 • The estimated mean SSB during the peak period of catches (1957-1961) was ca.

25 thousand tons.

References:

Dick E.J. and MacCall A.D. 2011. Depletion-Based Stock Reduction Analysis: A catch-based method for determining sustainable yields for data-poor fish stocks. Fisheries Research, 110: 331–341.

MacCall AD. 2009. Depletion-corrected average catch: a simple formula for estimating sustainable yields in data-poor situations. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 2267–2271.

Rosenberg A.A, Fogarty M.J, Cooper A.B, Dickey-Collas M, Fulton EA, Gutierrez N.L, Hyde K.J.W., et al. 2014. Developing new approaches to global stock status assessment and fishery production potential of the seas. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Circular (Rome), 1086: 1–175.

Walters C.J, Martell S.J.D, and Korman J. 2006. A stochastic approach to stock reduction analysis. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 63: 212–223.

Worm B, Hilborn R, Baum J.K, Branch T.A, Collie J.S, Costello C, Fogarty M.J., et al. 2009. Rebuilding global fisheries. Science, 325: 578–585.

Distribution of North Sea skates and sharks: 112 years of change

Camilla Sguotti, Christopher P. Lynam, Bernardo García-Carreras, Jim R. Ellis and Georg H. Engelhard

Note: The groundwork for this study was done at Cefas, UK, as MSc study by Camilla Sguotti (Univer-sity of Padova, Italy; ‘MSc with Distinction’), supervised by Georg Engelhard (Cefas), with co-supervision by Christopher Lynam (Cefas) and support by Bernardo García-Carreras and Jim Ellis. Facilitated by COST OPP, the study resulted in a paper in the high-profile journal Global Change Biology (Impact factor 8.4), available ‘open access.’

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The question addressed: How have assemblages of North Sea skates and sharks (elas-mobranchs) and their distribution changed in the North Sea over the past 112 years, while their environment was impacted by climate change, fishing, habitat degradation and other human pressures? This question is relevant because North Sea elasmobranchs include species of higher and lower commercial value, and ecologically important species including several classified as ‘Near-threatened’ or ‘High Risk’ on the IUCN Red List.

The key findings and their relevance:

From the early 20th to the early 21st century, we found that there has been a fundamental shift in the skate and shark assemblage: from historical dominance of larger, vulnerable, but also commercially more valuable species, to current prevalence of smaller, resilient species of limited commercial value.

The larger species – thornback ray Raja clavata, tope Galeorhinus galeus, spurdog Squalus acanthias – generally exhibited long-term declines, and the largest – common skate Dip-turus batis – disappeared completely from the southern North Sea (last observed in 1970). In contrast, smaller species – starry ray Amblyraja radiata, spotted ray Raja montagui, and lesser spotted dogfish Scyliorhinus canicula – have generally increased, as did smooth-hound Mustelus spp., likely benefiting from greater resilience to fishing and/or climate change. Recently, some trends have reversed, with the more northerly starry ray now declining and thornback ray increasing.

In Figure 1, this is illustrated for the two larger (tope, spurdog) and smaller (smooth-hound, lesser spotted dogfish) shark species.

Three primary drivers of the observed shifts in the assemblage were identified:

(1) Fishing – notably mechanised beam trawling introduced in the 1960s–1970s and historical target fisheries for elasmobranchs

(2) Climate change – favouring warm-water over cold-water species (3) Habitat loss – including degradation of coastal and outer estuary nursery habi-

tats

These pressures are not only impacting the North Sea but shelf seas worldwide. This means that parallel changes in elasmobranch assemblages elsewhere in the world are to be expected.

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Figure 1. Changing distributions, early 1900s – early 2000s, of four shark species in the North Sea, sorted left to right in decreasing size order. Note declines in tope (large, warm-associated) and spur-dog (fairly large, cold-associated), but increases in smooth-hounds (medium, warm-associated) and lesser-spotted dogfish (small, warm-associated). Legend: Symbols represent survey hauls (filled red if at least 1 individual was observed, otherwise unfilled). Graded background colours show the predict-ed distribution (dark to light colours indicating high to low likelihood of a species to be caught at a given location).

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References:

Sguotti C, Lynam C.P, García-Carreras B, Ellis J.R, Engelhard G.H. 2016. Distribution of skates and sharks in the North Sea: 112 years of change. Global Change Biology, 22: 2729–2743.

The evolution of bottom trawling impact on the benthic ecosystem (and demersal fish populations)

Adriaan Rijnsdorp

Benthic ecosystems provide important goods and services, such as fisheries products and supporting, regulation and cultural services. There are serious concerns about the ad-verse impact of bottom trawling on benthic ecosystems and the targeted fish species. Current concerns are similar to those raised as early as the 14th century.

The objective of this case study is to reconstruct the technological evolution of bottom trawling (i) to estimate the historic developments in the exploitation of North Sea flatfish and (ii) to estimate how bottom trawling has impacted the seafloor and benthic ecosys-tem. Fisheries science has developed quantitative models to study the impact of fisheries on fish stocks, as well as the impact on the seabed and the benthic ecosystems. These models provide a solid starting point for historical research as they highlight the type of information that is required. In this case study we reconstruct the historic development in intensity and spatial extent of bottom trawling based on a variety of data sources (ar-chaeological, historical, fisheries technological, geological, fisheries), with particular fo-cus on the North Sea. Although pelagic species such as herring and predatory fish species such as cod, ling and haddock were targeted with passive gear since the start of the 2nd millennium, the use of active gears was constrained by the available technology to shal-low waters and smooth sea bed habitats. In the 19th century, bottom trawling gradually spread out over the entire North Sea. In the beginning bottom trawling was mainly re-stricted to sea bed habitats with soft sediments, but as steam replaced wind and hand power, heavier gear became available, allowing trawlers to move into previously untraw-lable grounds. Here, the evolution of the trawling footprint in the North Sea will be esti-mated based on the sea bed characteristics and state of the trawling technology. In addition, historic data will be compiled on the species composition and size composition of the catch and on the quantities caught.

Figure 1. Plaice fishery by trawl nets off the coast of Holland and hook-and-line fishery further off-shore. From Adriaen Coenen (1577–1581) Visboeck, Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

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A 40-year retrospective on the management of the North Sea roundfish community

Robert B. Thorpe, P.J. Dolder, S. Reeves, P. Robinson, S. Jennings

We looked at the extent to which achieving maximum sustainable yield (MSY) has been successful in the North Sea fishery since 1970. We used a size-structured model of 21 individual species, accounting for both mixed fishery (a gear or fleet catching different stocks at the same time) and multispecies (yield of one fishery being impacted by fishing on another via food-web interactions) effects. The model has 4 idealised fleets (Thorpe et al. 2016), beam, otter, pelagic, and industrial trawlers, and evaluates their impact in terms of gross economic yield (£) and community-wide risk of stock impairment.

The model takes account of uncertainties in ecological parameters via an ensemble ap-proach, in which a collection of model variants that adequately represent stock biomasses from 1990–2010 are used to produce probabilistic forecasts of community state rather than a single “best guess model”. The procedure by which the model ensemble was gen-erated and evaluated is described in Thorpe et al. (2015) and is shown schematically in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Schematic of experiment design, showing how the model ensemble is generated, and then used to produce probabilistic forecasts for a large number of possible fleet fishing scenarios.

The model ensemble was run for 10 000 different fleet fishing scenarios, in which each fleet was independently allowed to fish at one of ten different levels of effort. Hindcast statistics were then generated by taking the results from the fleet combination that most closely resembled the fishing mortalities reported by ICES for each year as being repre-sentative of the outcomes for that year. Whilst this hindcast is a collection of equilibrium forecasts rather than a dynamically self-consistent trajectory through time, the coherence of the system response in risk/reward space suggests that the approximation is legitimate in this case. The hindcast results are shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3. Hindcast of North Sea fisheries management outcomes expressed in terms of risk and re-ward. The area marked in green is consistent with the ICES precautionary principle, that the commu-nity-wide risk of stock depletion is less than 5% per stock.

Results indicate that in the 1970s, the North Sea was poorly managed with high levels of risk to stocks across the community. During this period, the situation deteriorated fur-ther, with increasing risk and reduced yields. The situated stabilised in the 1980s and then began to improve slightly in the 1990s, with improving yields at somewhat reduced risk. Since about 2003, there has been a dramatic improvement in management outcomes, with dramatic reductions in risk without loss of yield. This historical trajectory can be compared with the timeline of management decisions in order to determine which man-agement decisions have been most effective in improving the overall outcomes.

References:

Thorpe R.B, Le Quesne W.J.F, Luxford F, Collie J.S, and Jennings S. 2015. Evaluation and manage-ment implications of uncertainty in a multispecies size-structured model of population and community responses to fishing. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6: 49-58.

Thorpe R.B, Dolder P.J, Reeves S, Robinson P, and Jennings S. 2016. Assessing fishery and ecologi-cal consequences of alternate management options for multispecies fisheries. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 73. DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fsw028.

Marine ecosystem change in deep time: Implications for current science and man-agement

Bryony A. Caswell

Palaeoecological information can help us understand the recent and future changes our marine ecosystems may experience. It can be applied to the following questions:

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• What was the structure of past marine communities (species and functional composition, interactions), and how much natural variability existed?

• How did past communities respond, and over what timescales, to entirely natural environmental change?

• How resilient were marine communities? How long did it take to return to a pre-impacted state? and what were the important factors for recovery?

Past environmental change and ecosystem/community reorganisation

The fossil record can tell us how past ecosystems have been reorganized through trophic cascades, regime shifts, and mass extinctions. These upheavals often have distinct spatial and temporal structures and the global and regional patterns of change can yield infor-mation on the drivers, timings, and relationships. For example:

• There have been many periods of extreme environmental change during Earth history that are analogous to the current anthropogenic climate change in scale, magnitude and rate. One manifestation of climate change which has a strong signal in the geological record is deoxygenation. In the present-day, rapid deoxygenation is occurring due to both climate (Diaz and Rosenberg 2008, Stramma et al. 2010) and the additional nutrient entering the sea from ag-ricultural practices. The severity of these changes for ecosystems could have acute impacts on marine ecosystems and valuable fish and shellfish stocks. Deoxygenation can result in extinction, changes in food web structuring, shifts of species and large changes in body size (e.g., Caswell and Coe 2013, Caswell and Frid 2013, Caswell and Coe 2014).

• Fossil data can indicate what taxa were most susceptible, which characteristics were associated with resilience, and over what timescales the changes oc-curred.

• These records can also tell us about the drivers of change. Links can be estab-lished using information on environmental change from both the geology and geochemistry of the relevant deposits (e.g., Caswell and Frid 2016).

• Environmental change is complex and often associated with thresholds. The broad scale long term perspective available from the fossil record can help us to uncover environmental thresholds and early warning signs.

Past biogeographic patterns also have lessons for present-day biogeographic range shifts:

• There is a large body of data on the past geographic distributions of species because this data is used in biostratigraphy (a dating method that uses the temporal ranges of species).

• We can also get an idea of the environmental stimuli for change if we have good geochemical proxy data.

• We can look at the invasion dynamics associated with past species range shifts. This could tell us how native taxa were effected, the ultimate outcomes of in-vasions and range shifts, and insight on the timescales of these processes.

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Data from the fossil record can also be used to verify and inform model predictions of long-term global ecological change. Modellers have identified a shortage of strong eco-logical baselines for understanding the degree of natural long-term variability, as we lack measurements over the temporal scales on which biota and climate interact (e.g. it re-quires 10’s to 1000’s of years for the oceans to adjust to a new climatic state). Fossil data could particularly inform models of shifts in species ranges in relation to climate change and predicted patterns of extinction e.g. the work of Cheung et al. (2009); and changes in the body-size of commercially important animals in response to ocean deoxygenation (e.g. Cheung et al. 2012, Caswell and Coe 2013).

References:

Caswell B.A, Coe A.L. 2013. Primary productivity controls on opportunistic bivalves during Early Jurassic oceanic deoxygenation. Geology, 41: 1163–1166.

Caswell B.A, Coe A.L. 2014. The impact of anoxia on pelagic macrofauna during the Toarcian Oce-anic Anoxic Event (Early Jurassic). Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 125: 383–391.

Caswell B.A, Frid C.L.J. 2016. Marine ecosystem resilience during extreme deoxygenation: the Early Jurassic oceanic anoxic event. Oecologia. Doi: 10.1007/s00442-016-3747-6

Cheung W.L., et al. 2009. Projecting global marine biodiversity impacts under climate change sce-narios. Fish and Fisheries, 10: 235-251.

Cheung W.L., et al. 2012. Shrinking of fishes exacerbates impacts of global ocean changes on marine ecosystems. Nature Climate Change, 3: 254–258.

Diaz R.J, and Rosenberg R. 2008. Spreading dead zones and consequences for marine ecosystems. Science, 321: 926–929.

Stramma L., et al. 2010. Ocean oxygen minima expansions and their biological impacts. Deep-Sea Research Part 1, 57: 587–595.

Using historical data to detect the proximity of a system to a regime shift.

Camilla Sguotti, Romain Frelat, Saskia Otto and Christian Möllmann

Marine communities and ecosystems have experienced profound changes in their struc-tures and functionality, especially in the last century. Multiple anthropogenic pressures such as fishing pressure, climate change, modification of habitat, eutrophication, all on top of natural variability, have played a fundamental role in modifying ecosystems, par-ticularly in recent decades. Communities can show non-linear responses to impacts, es-pecially if exposed to multiple drivers. This can lead to unexpected and abrupt changes, known as regime shifts. Here we introduce the concept of regime shift and early warning signals and how historical data could be used in these contexts, referring to WGHIST ToR (a).

Regime shifts (RS) are abrupt changes between two or more ecological states. They are particularly important because of their association with a lack of reversibility and hyste-resis. RS have occurred in many basins (e.g. Baltic Sea, North Sea etc.) and, in some cases, they have brought strong economic losses. They are particularly complicated to forecast, because of the difficulty in predicting non-linear responses of these systems. Yet being able to detect RS in advance is fundamental in order to apply successful proactive man-agement approaches and to avoid ecological and economic losses. Recently, new indica-

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tors have been suggested to aid in detecting these shifts, so-called early warning signals of RS (EWS). In this context, marine historical data can play a fundamental role.

The EWS of RS are a class of statistical indicators based on common mathematical prop-erties of systems approaching a tipping point. For instance, critical slowing down is in-dicative of behavior of a system close to a tipping point and can lead to an increase in the variability and correlation of the system itself. These characteristics are measurable by a series of EWS indicators that could be able to detect the proximity of a system to a tip-ping point in advance, helping us to predict whether a system is about to undergo a re-gime shift. However, in order to be validated and reliable, these analyses require the utilization of long time series and many observations, which are often difficult to find in current ecological data.

Historical data can provide new resources for EWS detection. In some cases, the data can be spatially and temporally well resolved. Therefore, they could be applied successfully to EWS indicators to detect RS. The use of historical data would favor the detection of past shifts or previous regimes that thus far have gone unnoticed, but also would allow the comparison of past and present data and results, rendering the RS detection more reliable and applicable. Therefore, the utilization of historical data with methods around these indicators can be useful in many ways. Firstly, investigating how RS have occurred in the past is important for clarifying what could happen in the future, and how commu-nities have adapted to previous catastrophic shifts. Secondly, they could help in the de-tection of future regime shift and in the application of more suitable management measures by avenues for validating and refining methods. All in all, these indicators and theories are promising. We acknowledge the importance of performing more studies in this context, keeping in mind that historical data can also be difficult to use and that cau-tion is needed when analyzing the results.

Developing these methods is fundamental to better understand the dynamics in the ma-rine systems, and to apply proactive management strategies. Marine historical ecology and data are of key importance to identify changes in marine communities and ecosys-tems and to disentangle the causal drivers. Studying RS using historical data would help to better analyze the past ecosystems´ dynamics, and provide a clearer understanding on what is happening now and will happen in the future.

Squid as winners of climate change – and the ‘Squid and chips’ news story

Georg H. Engelhard

A new study based on historical datasets held at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas) has demonstrated close links between climate change and the recent, marked range expansion of squid in the North Sea – and suggests that if cli-mate change is to continue, squid may end up beneficiaries where many finfish struggle.

For several years, scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Sci-ence (Cefas) had been aware of the increasing importance of squid for UK fisheries. Squid can provide an alternative where opportunities for fishers to catch traditional stocks are limited due to quota restrictions; but there is also a perception of a real increase in abun-dance of squid.

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In August 2016, Cefas scientists Jeroen van der Kooij, Georg Engelhard and David Right-on published a paper in the Journal of Biogeography (impact factor 4.544; see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jbi.12847/abstract) which does not only con-firm that there really has been a substantial increase in squid present in the North Sea – and a wide range expansion, especially since the 1990s - but also demonstrated that rising sea temperatures comprise the main driver. The relationship identified is also particular-ly strong. The long-term increase is explained by the long-term, climate change-driven trend in sea temperatures – and it further fits neatly in the picture of the southern North Sea as a global ‘hotspot of marine climate change’. In addition, one or a few individual cold years in a row – such as 2010–2013 which temporarily interrupted the North Sea’s long-term temperature trend – can cause short-term ‘dips’ in the squid trends. Tempera-ture in 2014 was up again, and so were the squid.

Not long after, on 12 December, their colleague John Pinnegar, who leads marine climate change research at Cefas, was invited by the British Ecological Society on the impact of climate change on the UK’s fish supplies – which he did, not only highlighting the de-cline in ‘traditional’ species such as cod and haddock, but also showcasing the new work on squid range expansion. This was picked up by the BBC, and the message broadcast widely that “with sea temperatures set to rise, the traditional British dish of fish and chips could be replaced with squid and chips.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38265395 ; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38297023). Within days, this storyline was picked up by newspapers and other news outlets across the UK, Europe and elsewhere, and “Fancy some squid and chips?" a topic of conversation for the wider public.

Reference

van der Kooij J, Engelhard GH, Righton DA (2016) Climate change and squid range expansion in the North Sea. Journal of Biogeography 43: 2285-2298. doi: 10.1111/jbi.12847

The shifting baseline syndrome in global marine ecosystem management

S. Raicevich, T. Fortibuoni, E. Klein, R. Thurstan, J. Rice, interested WGHIST/OPP participants.

The shifting baseline syndrome (SBS) refers to a shift over time in the expectation of what a healthy ecosystem baseline looks like, and could be determined by generational amne-sia (i.e. each generation grows up being accustomed to the way their environment looks and feels, and thus they don’t realize how degraded it has become over the course of the previous generation), which may affect not only common citizens, but even scientists. After Pauly (1995) defined this process, the description of historical baselines have been recognized as a key issue when understanding current ecosystem status and defining targets for marine ecosystem management, more prominently in the scientific arena.

However, at the same time, the actual use of historical baselines for management purpos-es have been questioned by several scholars, due to both practical and theoretical rea-sons. Indeed, historical baselines may refer to different ecosystem status, such as pristine (i.e. undisturbed) state, but also to sustainably or unsustainably disturbed status, de-pending on the timeframe of the analysis and data availability. Moreover, historical base-lines may not be suitable to identify management targets, due to the occurrence of regime shifts, ecological hysteresis, or to the change in societal values that might consider a less

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than optimal choice for re-establishing pristine or little disturbed status. All of these may result in neglecting the use of historical baselines, in some cases lowering the ambitions of management actions and undermining the goals of sustainability.

Accordingly, there is a need to assess whether and how this influential concept has been acknowledged in current marine ecosystem based management, and assessed as a con-tribution to the knowledge base for management and/or to set future targets for ecosys-tem restoration. In this framework, a joint group of scholars belonging to WG1 of the OPP COST action, ICES WGHIST and other experts are starting an initiative to draft a review paper to assess the extent to which the SBS concept has been endorsed in current marine Ecosystem Based Management. In particular, the objective is to address:

1 ) How the concept of SBS and historical baselines has been incorporated into EBM in framing high level Ocean Policy legislation

2 ) How SBS and historical baselines concepts are used to set future target and reference points, in relation to which ecosystem components and attributes, and in relation to what kind of indicators.

To this purpose, the group will analyse the international legislation and acts dealing with Ocean policy and Ecosystem Based Management (e.g., CBD, IUCN framework, UN-CLOS, FAO EFM, MSFD), including regional sea conventions (e.g., OSPAR, HELCOM, Barcelona Convention etc.). Possibly, national legislation could be also considered, ac-cording to specific case-studies of marine ecosystem management implementation.

The process will include gathering information on the general aim of the policies (e.g. restore, preserve, rebuild, maintain, etc.), specific reference conditions mentioned (base-line; historical baseline; historical range; current status; reference condition, etc.), specific definition of target to be achieve and timeline (reference point, reference direction, refer-ence limit, target, status, etc.), and indicators applied in case-studies (ecosystem compo-nent, metrics used, target and reference conditions used).

During the OPP COST meeting and WGHIST meeting, the group of participants to this activity have been extended to include other researchers willing to participants, i.e. A. Barausse, G. Engelhard, H. Ojaveer, and B. MacKenzie. Other scientists might join these activities according to the development of the research and the definition of specific needs for contribution.

Opportunities for integrating historical perspectives into management

Contributors: Interested WGHIST/OPP participants

During the previous meeting, the working group discussed some of the limitations and challenges for using marine historical ecology (MHE) data in policy and management. The discussion addressed some of the difficulties that have been encountered by WGHIST members when attempting to introduce MHE findings and data into manage-ment, advisory, and policy contexts. The group identified a number of issues and consid-erations associated with the application of MHE results, which are listed in the 2015 WGHIST report.

Over the last 12 months, this proposal has been developed further by the WGHIST Chairs, as it is recognised that in recent years there has been a growing global body of

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research examining the utility of neglected or unconventional data sources for conserva-tion, restoration and natural resource management. Rather than repeat previous work, WGHIST members aim to build upon this by conducting a review of existing research to identify knowledge gaps in the literature, then draw upon WGHIST members’ experi-ences, in the context of these identified knowledge gaps, to highlight opportunities and methodological hurdles when attempting to integrate historical perspectives and data into management. The manuscript thus aims to build upon previous literature to demon-strate to managers through example (1) the common limitations of historical sources, (2) how these limitations can be overcome or uncertainty better accounted for, and (3) the potential gains to be made by the inclusion of such data into science and management.

WGHIST will continue working on the above prior to the 2017 meeting, with an email update and invitation to contribute to be sent around the WGHIST membership in early 2017. The article will be intended as primarily a multi-authored WGHIST and OPP WG1 product, with potential input and contributions from colleagues outside WGHIST and WG1.

Proposal for historical data and stock assessment workshop

C. Sguotti, H. Ojaveer, interested WGHIST/OPP participants

During the working group meeting, discussions were raised about how historical data, and in particular the resources and knowledge that WGHIST members share, can be used to better understand stock dynamics and contribute to management or advisory issues, both inside and outside ICES. Indeed, historical data may contain critical information on stock baselines, the evolution of stocks and management indicators over time. All this information can help policy makers and scientists develop more efficient management measures. In some cases, data are quite extensive and could be used in current stock as-sessment models or advice, in particular to extend the stock assessment back in time or to create baseline for data poor species. However, in other cases, data are scarce and lack information such as spatial coverage, size or catch at age, and/or effort. Therefore, even though the importance of these data is undeniable, is still challenging to include them in stock assessment or other type of fishery management. Yet even these examples hold insight, as the way in which scientist have addressed them can inform strategies for con-temporary data-poor stocks.

Willingness to explore different methods to use WGHIST data in understanding stocks dynamic was expressed among WGHIST members, yet WGHIST needs help in under-standing how to use the stock information available, as well as creative assistance and collaboration from modellers that have experienced working with data-limited cases. Because of this need for experts to cooperate, a proposal put forth at the 2016 meeting to organize a workshop between interested WGHIST scientists and stock assessment ex-perts and modellers from others ICES WGs. Indeed, a workshop could be very fruitful and encourage dialogue on how to access and use unconventional resources for data-limited advice. Further, it would shed light on how to integrate the historical knowledge in advisory issues.

Before the end of the meeting, support was shown for this hypothetical workshop also from the stock assessment scientist side via engagement with these scientists at ICES. Therefore, we carried out some preliminary steps to proceed with the organization of the

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workshop next year (2017). To this end, first during the Working Group meeting a metadata template was developed (led by Sguotti) and subsequently evaluated by a guest stock assessment scientist (Arni Magnusson). Secondly, after the meeting, the tem-plate was circulated among all WGHIST members to find optimal case studies to use during the workshop, and researchers strongly willing to participate (summary in Annex 5). From here, the next steps will be to identify stock assessment scientists and modellers who are interested in joining in the workshop, and finally organizing it. This activity seems particularly promising and would hopefully help in discover new ways in which historical data can be used to understand stocks dynamics and contribute to management issues.

Theme 2. Data rescue, digitization, and future development (ToR b)

Update on WGHIST metadata on historical sources and digital tools

WGHIST members and ICES Data Centre

Since its inception as a Study Group, WGHIST members have maintained an Excel data-base of metadata on the historical and long-term data resources they use and are aware of. Until this iteration of WGHIST, this metadata remained an offline document that, while freely available via request, was not readily accessible by the ICES and larger scien-tific community. To remedy this, WGHIST has worked with members of the ICES Secre-tariat Data Centre to get this metadata online. During 2016, the Chairs worked predominately with Periklis Panagiotidis to include the metadata in the ICES Data Por-tal, and ensure it is accessible and searchable to the ICES community.

Mr. Panagiotidis attended the 2016 meeting to unveil the online metadata, show WGHIST members how to use the data portal, and to discuss final steps on making it public via the ICES website. WGHIST members also took this time to try out searching the metadata and checking their own contributions for errors and updates. Following discussion provided final feedback for completing the metadata, which will be made public in early 2017. Once done, WGHIST metadata will be available and searchable online.

Additional digital products possible were also discussed in 2016, including spatial tools to demonstrate for users where historical data is available and on which species via the online ICES Spatial Facility. These are to be completed in 2017. Finally, WGHIST partici-pants also voted by email on an image to use as an icon for historical data in all ICES data tools, allowing such data to be readily recognized.

Historical data on fish and fisheries in the Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean)

Tomaso Fortibuoni, Simone Libralato, Cosimo Solidoro, Otello Giovanardi, Saša Raicevich

Current research focuses on the publication of a database on fish and fisheries in the Adriatic Sea in an open-source data portal platform. The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet; www.emodnet.eu) was chosen, as it consists of more than 100 organizations assembling marine data, products and metadata to make these frag-mented resources more available to public and private users relying on quality-assured, standardized and harmonized marine data which are interoperable and free of re-

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strictions on use. Database description will be submitted to Nature Scientific Data (http://www.nature.com/sdata/), which is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for de-scriptions of scientifically valuable datasets, and research that advances the sharing and reuse of scientific data.

The database consists of three parts:

1 ) Historical trawl-survey data (EMODnet – Biology) 2 ) Naturalists’ descriptions of fish fauna (EMODnet – Biology) 3 ) Landing data (EMODnet – Human Activities)

Regarding historical trawl-survey data, at present four surveys are included in the data-base. The expedition HVAR (1948–1949) was the first large-scale fishery-independent trawl-survey ever performed in the Adriatic Sea (Figure 1A). This survey was conducted in the period when the demersal fish and invertebrate communities were not intensely exploited (“post-war conditions”), and thus these data can serve as a reference baseline. Another survey was performed in 1972 in the central Adriatic along the profile Fano-Dugi Otok (5 hauls), which was extended to four profiles (17 hauls) in the northern and central Adriatic in 1975. Finally, data from the so-called “Pipeta” programme collected in 1988 and 1991 are included in the database. All surveys were performed with an otter-trawl net and data are reported as Catch per Unit of Effort (kg/h). As for naturalists’ descriptions of fish fauna, the dataset includes information on fish species reported by 36 Italian and Austro-Hungarian naturalists (Figure 1B), covering a period of about 150 years (1818–1956). 255 fish species are described in terms of pres-ence/absence, perceived abundance, habitat preferences, seasonality, size, and other life-history traits.

Finally, landings dataset includes yearly landings (kg per species) for approximately 100 species (fish, mollusks, crustaceans) from the Trieste fish market (1902–1968, Northern Adriatic; Figure 1C), and Italian official landings for the Northern and Central Adriatic (1953–2012).

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Trieste fish-market

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Figure 1. a) Historical trawl-survey HVAR; b) Krisch A. “Speisefische des Adriatischen meres” (Wien, 1908); c) Landings for European eel (Anguilla Anguilla).

Theme 3. Novel and non-traditional data sources and analytical approaches (ToR c)

The NorFish project and a case study of the SW Danish fisheries c.1550-1650.

Poul Holm

NorFish is a five-year project (2016–2020) to understand the restructuring of the North Atlantic fisheries, fish markets, and fishery-dependent communities in the late medieval and early modern world.

Major advances have been made in recent years in establishing fishing pressures in me-dieval and early-modern Europe (Hoffman 20xx; Holm et al. 2010; Barrett & Orton 2016). However, because the original documentation was often collected for tax and customs purposes, it defies immediate interpretation of fishing effort and estimates of total extrac-tion. Our work identifies some ways to get around this problem.

The Danish SW Jutland fisheries are of interest for the light they throw on factors of envi-ronment, economics and policy in the early modern context. They thrived and dimin-ished as part of a much wider trajectory of NW European fisheries. We aimed to establish total landings, fishing effort, and the economic value of the catches, and demonstrate that such calculations are possible at least for one early-modern fishery and by implication possibly for more. At the same time, also show the challenges of piecing together the evidence from a scattered evidence base.

A C

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Marine ecosystem change in deep time: Novel data sources and methodologies

Bryony A. Caswell

There is arguably no better example of a true non-anthropogenically impacted ecosystem than those that existed prior to any human influence. Although the palaeontological rec-ord may not be able to provide baselines by historic region (due to differences in conti-nental arrangement and thus ocean basins), it can provide ecological baselines for comparable habitat types, climatic zones, regional hydrography and so on. In particular, the palaeontological record can help to address the following two questions:

• What does ‘good ecosystem health’ look like? • What amount of change is natural in the absence of anthropogenic perturba-

tion?

Obviously fossil data has its limits, but it also contains a wealth of information on past species, populations, communities, and ecosystems. A good understanding of contempo-rary marine ecology means we can interpret fossil taxa given their extant relatives, their functional morphology and their physical associations in the rock record (e.g. associa-tions with environments as determined from information on the environment of deposi-tion, e.g. their geology and geochemistry or their associations with other fossil taxa).

The baseline information available from the fossil record could include taxonomic and functional diversity, population or community structure and dynamics, and trophic in-teractions. For instance, we can derive population size structure, age structure, morpho-metric relationships, and larval development (Figure 1). Past behaviour can be established including reproductive processes, feeding and life habit (Figures 2-3). Finally, we can establish past community composition and thus the structure of food webs, the relative productivity of the different trophic levels, and the dynamics of ecological func-tioning.

These aims can be achieved using fossil Lagerstätte: those fossiliferous deposits that have exceptionally high quality of preservation (e.g. the Burgess Shale or the Solnholfen lime-stone) and represent a ‘life-assemblage’ which has undergone minimal post mortem dis-turbance. These fossil deposits can be considered analogous to archaeological finds from Pompeii that preserve a very narrow temporal window with exceptional detail. Other opportunities include collecting from specific fossil deposits or existing museum collec-tions from well-defined periods. There is a higher degree of temporal averaging for the latter two approaches, but many contemporary palaeoecologists are beginning to appre-ciate the need for higher temporal resolution sampling and so the applicability of these data to present-day ecology is improving.

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Figure 1. Fossil populations of e.g. fish and bivalve molluscs can yield information on population dynamics. Growth lines on the skeletons of organisms can indicate age structure and growth rates. The larval shells of mollucscs, whose morphometrics indicate developmental mode, can be preserved on the adult shell. Sources: Friedman, M et al. 2009, B.A. Caswell, and Kaim 2004.

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Figure 2. Marine ichthyosaur with well-preserved stomach contents can tell us about trophic interac-tions (in terms of trophic position we expect this animal was trophically equivalent to a dolphin). Although rarer associations between predator and prey or their bore holes/tooth marks/grazing traces can yield valuable information on trophic linkages. Photo: Steve Etches.

Figure 3. The behaviour of extinct organisms may preserved as the actual associations between the fossils themselves or as indirect records of their behaviour such as their burrows. Left fossil hermit crab occupying an ammonite conch, right naticid gastropods preseved during copulation. Sources: Dieni 2008, and Fraaije 2003.

References:

Dieni I. 2008. Coupling ampullinid gastropods: sexual behaviour frozen in Palaeogene deposits of northern Italy. Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia, 114: 505-514.

Fraije R.H.B. 2003. The oldest in situ hermit crab from the Lower Cretaceous of Speeton, UK. Palae-ontology, 46: 53-57.

Friedman M., et al. 2009. Ecomorphological selectivity among marine teleost fishes during the end-Cretaceous extinction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106: 5218-5223.

Kaim A. 2004. The evolution of conch ontogeny in Mesozoic open sea gastropods. Palaeontologia Polonica, 62: 1-182.

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The APS bulletin: A source for benchmarking the Western Mediterranean?

Oscar Sagué

After so many decades of intense human pressure on Western Mediterranean inshore ecosystems, it is challenging to establish the current level of exploitation due to the lack of old enough benchmarks. Besides the scarce historical commercial fisheries data availa-ble for these coastal waters, the Barcelona Spearfishing Association (APS) offers a 70 years old source that may help to fill this gap.

The APS is the oldest underwater activities association in Spain (1946) and one of the oldest in the world. Since its foundation and first issue on April 1946, APS has regularly published a bulletin with detailed information of their catches, stories about how they perceived the environment they were exploring, as well as information on fish species, commercial and recreational fisheries, and many other issues related with the sea. This bulletin has always been accompanied by excellent pictures that make the information more interesting, as changes in catch composition and gear can also be witnessed through them.

APS members (spear fishers, free divers, underwater photographers and scuba divers) are one of those few collectives that have witnessed with their own eyes the state of ma-rine inshore ecosystems since early 20th century and, fortunately, their experiences are expressed in this bulletin. This is a precious opportunity for marine scientists especially in understanding and developing necessary baselines through time.

Figure 1. The Barcelona Spearfishing Association Bulletin; early spear-fishers with their catch.

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Long-term occurrence of bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the North Sea

Floris Bennema

One of the aims of WGHIST is to integrate non-traditional methodologies and data sources to improve our knowledge base on long-term changes. In the context of WGHIST, the knowledge is not an end in itself, but is also used to enhance the quality of advice for current marine policy and management. This qualitative literature study ap-plies to these aims.

Figure 1. Commercial and recreational North Sea tuna fishery in the 20th century.

Until 1963, Bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) was abundant in the North Sea, leading to tuna fisheries off all countries adjacent to this sea. The fact that the fishery collapsed in 1963 is often used as an example of thoughtless overfishing. Recently there were sugges-tions in the Netherlands to 'bring back the tuna to the North Sea'. Thereby the assump-tion is made that the high number in the 20th century was the default situation for the North Sea in the centuries before. This study sets out to test this assumption.

The study uses a variety of non-traditional sources, in 7 languages, from the countries along the North Sea coast as well as France. The core of the data involves twenty-nine 18th and 19th natural history books and thirteen early 20th century scientific papers. Additional information was found in over 120 newspaper articles, identified in newspa-per databases.

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Figure 2. The three tunas the 16th century Dutch fish trader Adriaen Coenen saw during his life.

The pre-1900 natural history books describe tuna as a common summer visitor along the western and northern coasts of Scotland and along the western coast of Norway. To a lesser extent, tuna also appeared in the Skagerrak and Kattegat, and was occasionally seen in the North Sea. From 1910–1962, schools of tuna were increasingly observed, as described in scientific as well as newspaper articles described after 1910. Newspapers also revealed large numbers of tuna in the Dutch Scheldt region, a totally forgotten fact nowadays.

Around 1930, debate on whether high numbers of tuna at that time were exceptional led to a vivid discussion between scientists. An analysis of the arguments leads to the con-clusion that the points put forward by the sceptics were rather unconvincing. Additional data on the change in what fishermen regarded as plague species, from sharks to tunas, and on the frequent confusion about species identification in earlier times strengthen the conclusion that the 20th century abundance may not be considered the default situation in the centuries before.

Population studies around the 1950s show that the tuna caught in the North Sea had travelled along the coast of Norway the month before. Adding this fact to the findings about the pre-1900 situation leads to the conclusion that Norwegian tuna are vital to the North Sea.

Today, tuna are not present at historic levels in the North Sea. Per available knowledge, the best way to regain tunas in the North Sea is to restore historic levels on the Norwe-gian coast. Tuna that swim to our area are large, usually two meters and more. Effective protection of these large tuna in southern Europe is also crucial to restoration. Manage-ment action is recommended, but the outcome of this study question if it will be fruitful to aim at the exceptional high densities of the 1910–1962 period.

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The ‘Lost’ History of Bottom Trawling in England & Ireland, ca.1400-1850

Peter Jones

Preliminary research strongly suggests that, in the fourteenth century, beam trawling spread from the estuaries of the Thames and the Medway, in southern England and gained a significant foothold right around the south-eastern coast of England over the next two hundred years or so. This expansion is between three and four hundred years before scholars conventionally date trawling’s impact on the benthos and on stocks of commercial fish. Yet work demonstrates that these by conventional dates in the early seventeenth century, trawling was already being practiced some distance from the coast of East Sussex and Kent, perhaps as far as ten leagues, or more than thirty miles. By this early date, it was also already widely considered to be extremely problematic, and was blamed for falling catches of commercial whitefish destined for the expanding London market. Indeed, beam trawling was considered to be so potentially destructive to com-mercial stocks in this period that it led to a number of proclamations, prohibitions and prosecutions and, in 1635, to the first and only outright ban on the practice in British his-tory. This ban proved ineffective: within a hundred years bottom trawling had spread along the south coast of England, and had also taken hold in some key inshore fisheries on the south and east coasts of Ireland, where it was once again implicated in falling catches of commercial roundfish.

On this evidence, the history of the spread and impact of beam trawling in nearshore waters in the North East Atlantic clearly needs to be reconsidered; but so, too, does the history of relatively large-scale commercial beam trawling, in order to take account of the opening up of the Nymph Bank in the early- to mid-eighteenth century, which lies be-tween eleven and thirty leagues (35 to 90 miles) off the coast of southern Ireland. Here, it was reported that large numbers of English and other foreign boats were routinely using trawl gear with beams of up to thirty feet in length.

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Empirical dynamic modelling and historical data reveal nonlinear dynamics in his-torical fisheries.

Klein, E. S., Glaser S.M., Jordaan A., Kaufman L., and Rosenberg A.A.

As we look towards a future of changing climate and increasing human needs, sustaining our oceans for both ecological and human well-being is critical. This aim necessitates an awareness of how marine social-ecological systems adapt and are resilient to change, an aim that requires us to look beyond traditional resources and approaches. This proves especially true as research increasingly demonstrates the prevalence of nonlinear and even chaotic behaviour in the oceans, challenging conventional assumptions of linearity and equilibrium. Together, this research and needs of the future challenge us to use crea-tive data and methods to study ecological systems and reliant human communities.

The prevalence of nonlinear and chaotic dynamics is especially critical. Nonlinear sys-tems are non-additive and ‘state-dependent’, meaning they are dependent on current conditions of the whole system and system behaviour cannot be understood by studying system aspects in isolation. That is, studying interactions of predators and prey in the lab will be fundamentally different that predator-prey interactions in reality. Moreover, out-comes may be dramatically diverse given impacts, and long-term forecasting is difficult if not impossible in many cases. If such nonlinear and state-dependent behaviour is wide-spread, do we interpret such dynamics and what do they mean for our evolving knowledge of ecosystems and our management of natural resources? In marine fisheries ecosystems, such dynamics have primarily been associated with exploited species, sug-gesting an anthropogenic stressor may explain their prevalence. However, earlier work did not fully control for either differences between species or the reality of indirect and

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long-lasting human impacts. Therefore, it did not fully address whether nonlinearity is innate or a consequence of human intervention. This question is critical for how we un-derstand and manage marine systems, given both the possibility of them as a warning sign, and their implications for long-term forecasting.

Here, for the first time, nonlinear dynamics were investigated using both historical (1870s to 1920s) and contemporary data (1960–2014) in an ecologically and economically im-portant system, the Bay of Fundy. This allowing the exploration of complex nonlinear dynamics for the same species through time and prior to intense human harvesting. We used innovative empirical dynamics modelling to analyse dynamics and structure through time, explicitly exploring both linear and nonlinear behaviour. This research is the first to combine these emergent techniques with unique long-term data to assess the influence of people on marine ecosystems through time.

Results revealed nonlinear signatures prevalent prior to heavy industrial exploitation, and that these dynamics were highly deterministic, demonstrating nonlinearity can be innate and predictable, at least in the short-term. Nonlinear dynamics also were found in contemporary statistics, but this varied by species, suggesting more complex drivers at play. In addition, and particularly important for management, comparison with present-day data demonstrated a strong reduction in deterministic dynamics following increases in exploitation pressure, suggesting that fishing can impact populations in complex ways and render fisheries data less predictable for management. Collectively, the work shows that complex and nonlinear dynamics are not always caused by human intervention, and exhibits their importance in ecosystem science and management.

This work provides new insight into the structure and dynamics necessary for system resilience, and how human impacts can undermine that resilience using novel approach-es in conjunction with historical and long-term data sources. Empirical dynamic model-ling is especially appropriate for historical time series, as it is non-parametric and leverages information within the time series itself. Further, it provides accessible avenues for addressing gaps in historical data, and for leveraging across data sets.

Related publication: Klein et al. 2016. “A complex past: historical and contemporary fisheries demon-strate nonlinear dynamics and a loss of determinism”. Marine Ecology Progress Series. 57:237-246. doi: 10.3354/meps11886. Available open access.

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Theme 4. Human dimensions of marine ecosystems through time (ToR d)

Dutch cod fishing in the North Sea 1818-1911: Information applicable to today’s policy and management?

Christine Overgaard

The usual perspective in Dutch fishing history is that liberal politics are desirable espe-cially when defending market economy, as it allows people to act independently, produc-tion is more efficient, and profits rise. However, this research suggests otherwise.

Looking at archival material seeking the historical reason for the overexploitation of the cod stock in the North Sea, a broader perspective was applied including examining the fishermen’s social network. Research into the archival material and a wide range of litera-ture sources uncovered both catch data and information on the living and activities of the fishermen.

Long before 1800, the Dutch fishermen fished for cod in the North Sea according to their own informal rules. Yet in 1818, after escaping the French occupation, the Dutch ship owners convinced the Dutch King that he should support them financially - as he sup-ported several professions after the occupation - and in return they formalized their fish-ing practices and allowed for his control. Then, in the 1850s, politicians decided to liberalize any rules on fishing and remove controls, permitting free cod fishing in the North Sea. Some Dutch fishermen continued to fish according to the previous informal rules, while others used liberalization to build new vessels, employ new gear, fishing at any time of the year and as much as possible.

Comments in records on fishing show that the choice of whether fishermen continued to follow traditional, established rules was not random. It depended on the social hierarchy among fishermen at the time in the Netherlands. Due to their monopoly on salted fish, those fishing at sea ranked higher than the ones fishing along the coast. The hierarchy was reflected in the unofficial and non-mandatory fishermen’s rules about fishing, as well as in the rules on the fish products and in the agreements with the king. The liberali-zation of the fishery in the 1850s ended these rules. Therefore, the coastal fishermen were the ones the most eager to apply new techniques and fish in new areas. The sea fisher-men preferred the traditional rules on fishing, because they were concerned about the consequences to the cod stock and their future as fishermen.

This hierarchy, and the intersection of it with fishing practices, was also impacted by changes in markets and technology. When ice became a new means of fish preservation in the second half of the century, this allowed for an expanded market for fresh fish. This further altered previous hierarchies in favour of the coastal fishermen. In addition, family business structures gave way to limited companies in order to finance new developments in coastal fisheries.

Collectively, the ship owners and fishermen who continued fishing according to their own rules after liberalization had different characteristics: They were sea fishermen and they kept managing their business as a shared ownership within the family, among friends, or between youngster and mentor. It was a means of education, continuity and social security. They knew fish stocks and catch rates fluctuated and income from fishing

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varied, but this did not change their fishing. They also engaged in trade, shipping, or crafts to maintain business themselves.

Considering the characteristics of the fishermen and their fishing in combination with changes in fisheries policy in connection with changing markets and technology, the re-sult indicates differences between groups of fishermen. First, in the gear they used: as coastal fishermen adopted the more novel trawl, the sea fishermen continued using tradi-tional long lines. Second, there were social results, as well. Coastal fishermen looked to business for means of advancement, while sea fishermen sought knowledge from within a close family business. In addition, one group aimed at immediate profit, the other for long term rentability. This was also reflected in different attitudes towards risk and re-sponsibility.

There is also evidence of larger social consequences. Fishermen’s rules traditionally im-plied funding for the teaching of boys, the retirement of fishermen, and the support of widows of fishermen. They created the fund to take care of mutual social problems they were not able to handle personally and paid a set percentage of their landings to the fund. Thereby, they made sure that the people of today and tomorrow were able to make a living from fishing. These social benefits formed the local network and committed the fishermen to obeying the rules on fishing they themselves agreed on.

After liberalization, the social networks in the fishing communities disintegrated. Some sea fishing communities maintained their funds for some time, but most communities were not able to, and they felt no responsibility any longer. On the one hand, this can be seen allowing people to be freer, as fishermen’s rules are often recognized as prohibitive and restrictive. Yet on the other hand, traditional rules can be seen as organized for soli-darity and the long term. If people did not agree and wanted to fish in their own way they were able to, but then they would not benefit from the social network or the social benefits of funding. For many years, most people chose solidarity, social network and fishing rules.

Finally, and most importantly in relation to the different perspectives on fishing, fisher-men engaged in a longer-term vision that recognized that fish stocks were exhaustible, and if they wanted fish for their sons and grandsons they must protect the fish stock by not fishing close to the coast in spawning season. They had no control over the resource on which they depended, but they managed their use of it, their fishing, in mutual agreement in order to survive long term.

When liberalization formally removed these social constructs and vision, the general attitude changed, as fishing became a private issue with little concern for the future fish stock. These social changes had further social and ecological consequences. The cod stock declined quickly, and the Netherlands faced social unrest and emigration of fishermen.

Reference:

Overgaard Christine; Een spiering uitwerpen om een kabeljauw te vangen. How and why the Dutch fished for cod 1818-1911; Amsterdam University Press, 2015

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Dutch Fishermen the best in Europe for 300 years

Bo Poulsen

For more than 300 years, (c. 1550–1860), Dutch herring fishermen were the best in Europe when it came to filling their nets with herring. These findings emerge from newly pub-lished research into more than 40 different fishing practices across Europe trying to imi-tate the Dutch way of fishing. The study also confirms that their skills and knowledge were what really set the Dutch apart. Even when their European competitors succeeded in fishing with the exact same equipment as the Dutch fishermen, their annual catch per boat was much lower than that of the fishermen from Vlaardingen, Enkhuizen, and Schiedam were able to harvest from the North Sea.

During the Dutch Golden Age, the Dutch fishing industry was the dominant producer of salted herring in Europe, and dominating some 80% of the market, they catered for mil-lions of Europeans. The Dutch way of fishing with factory vessels in the North Sea was the most sophisticated fishing operation anywhere in the World.

This caused the kings, governments and private entrepreneurs in countries like England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, present-day Germany, Flanders and France to imitate the Dutch way of fishing. Conducting an extensive survey across Europe, Poulsen found 41 different attempts at copying the Dutch. Most of these were short-lived and a complete waste of money for the investors. In only two instances, in Emden (then Prus-sia) and Farsund (Norway) did the local fishing companies survive for several decades in the late 18th - early 19th century. Their annual catch rates, however, never came close to the Dutch performance, even though they used exactly the same technology.

Path dependency in social-ecological systems: Swedish fisheries policy, subsidies, and 100 years of over-fishing

Jonas Hentati-Sundberg, Fryers Hellquist K, and Duit A.

Classic economic theory attributes over-exploitation of natural resources to either a lack of regulation or lack of resource ownership. In fisheries across the western world, regula-tion has been the main strategy pursued by government agencies. However, accumulat-ing empirical examples indicate that state regulation is a non-trivial task that in some cases has contributed to rather than prevented resource declines and collapses. Path de-pendency – self-reinforcing historical trajectories driven by increasing marginal returns and the resulting inability of actors to change institutional frameworks despite high op-portunity costs – has been put forward as a theoretical explanation for persistent overex-ploitation of natural resources, but clear empirical evidence is lacking. We explored the role of path dependency in natural resource management by empirically studying a 100-year evolution of Swedish fisheries. We relied on three main types of original longitudi-nal data collected for the period 1914–2016: 1) fishery policy documents 2) subsidies granted to the fishing industry, and, 3) catch and fishing fleet data.

Our work uncovered three types of evidence for path dependency. First, neither political regime changes nor macro-economic variables (GPD, industry production) explain the observed temporal variation in subsidy levels. Second, the same policy instruments were used over long periods but were motivated differently based on the prevailing economic

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situation in the fishing sector. Third, despite increasing insights on the vulnerability of fish stocks to overexploitation, not at least from escalating research efforts in recent years, national policy goals in relation to fisheries remained surprisingly constant, continuously promoting incompatible goals of economic, social and environmental prosperity of the fishing sector.

We found that a general modernization and rationalization paradigm was persistent throughout the study, but was strengthen in the post-World War II-era. Governmental spending on subsidies were motivated by the need for providing cheap nutrition, em-ployment in the fishing sector, export incomes, and economic efficiency. The subsidy programs had a dominating role in creating fishing fleet overcapacity and declining catches resulting from overexploitation. In parallel, the cost of fisheries management has escalated. In the last decade there is evidence for an increasing acknowledgement of the need for sustainable exploitation levels, but subsidy levels remain relatively high.

We conclude that a mutual dependence between the fishing sector and governmental agencies can create a strong re-enforcing feedback, making policy surprisingly persistent over a long and otherwise very dynamic period. This leads to significant costs for the society, which experiences diminished benefits that are distributed among fewer actors, and delayed conservation efforts. Transforming such a re-enforcing system is difficult but necessary in order to establish a sound incentive structure for managers and fishers that can serve both sector development and other values for the society.

Understanding fishing communities, their cultural contexts and changing behaviour over time

Matt McKenzie

From my research, detailed understanding of human changes within fishing communi-ties suggests that current assumptions about fishing effort—and its consistency—might need to be reconsidered. For example, in New England, lengthy fishermen’s strikes and ownership lockouts—a few lasting several months—may have affected catch levels and timing of intense fishing effort. In addition to leaving vessels tied up for periods of time, the resolution of these issues often led to an immediate and intense period of fishing. Knowing the extent to which such periods of intense fishing coincided with target spe-cies’ annual spawning, migration, or other behaviours may shed light on some of the variations in subsequent years’ stock biomasses, recruitment, and catch yields.

In addition to fleet behaviours, it is important to understand fishing as a culturally and politically contextualized activity. Most fishing communities in the north Atlantic, for example, enjoy considerable respect and veneration from their neighbours outside the fishery. Such respect is, in and of itself, not problematic in any way. Understanding the role such cultural contexts and their use in the political discussions surrounding fisheries management, however, could shed light on how regulations get developed, implement-ed, and/or repealed. It may also shed light on how assiduously fishermen abided by such regulations, or their willingness to ignore them. Ultimately, those perspectives can better inform our understanding of fishing effort, and perhaps scientific uncertainties in anal-yses reliant upon fishery dependent data.

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Stepping back from the particulars of my current research project, and donning my fish-eries manager hat, WGHIST can play an important role in the global push toward ecosys-tem-based fisheries management. This initiative is an inherent historical exercise: by analysing past ecosystem metrics, fisheries scientists seek to uncover relationships to inform future catch advice. In some areas, however, what is considered “historical” is remarkably short-term—and usually limited to a period when stocks had been consist-ently overfished. Pushing those analyses further back in time—even in light of the data reliability from which such data may suffer—can only strengthen current understandings of what current ecosystems could possibly produce. Understanding not only historical data, but also the social and cultural contexts from which and why they were generated and collected, will greatly improve management efforts.

Fishbones and foreign policy – ICES marine science in the North-Western Area, c. 1923-1931

Bo Poulsen

This talk at WGHIST centred on the fisheries investigations in the North Atlantic with regards to the main commercial fish species such as cod, plaice, and halibut. These are some of the topics dealt with in my recent monograph, Global Marine Science and Carlsberg – The Golden Connections of Johannes Schmidt, (1877-1933), Leiden: Brill Publishers 2016. (http://www.brill.com/products/book/global-marine-science-and-carlsberg-golden-connections-johannes-schmidt-1877-1933).

Danish marine scientist and expedition leader, Johannes Schmidt, played a central role in the exploration of the life history of commercial and other species from the beginning of the international collaborations in ICES and into the early 1930s, a period which saw a tremendous growth in knowledge of where these species were spawning, where they fed, and where they lived their adult lives. From a theoretical point of view this research paved the way for a gradual shift in paradigm for how fish migrate, from the 18th centu-ry idea of the polar migration theory, towards the contemporary idea of a migration tri-angle. This was also tied in to what Schmidt called his racial investigations, where large scale investigations into the hereditary features of the cod proved the existence of many distinct populations of cod living in more restricted areas within the wider North Atlan-tic Ocean.

The migration pattern of the cod living off shore along the West coast of Greenland was one of the more spectacular discoveries emerging from an effort spanning several dec-ades, and one discovery which came about as a direct consequence of the political agenda of marking not only cod in the North Atlantic, but also marking a Danish geopolitical presence and interest in the territory in and around Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.

This talk presented a first inquiry into the state of Danish marine research in the face of the political crisis between Denmark and Norway over Greenland’s sovereignty, which spanned more than a decade from c. 1922/1933. Looking into the strategic and tactical considerations of the Danish commission for oceanography in 1924, there is good reason to conclude that the substantial marine science output emerging form the intense study of the commercially important species in the North Atlantic Ocean may in fact have been reinforced by Danish and Norwegian political interests in the area. Thus, it is plausible

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that the tagging experiments conducted as part of the North-Western Area Committee would not have been carried out as far away as the West coast of Greenland, if it had not been for the immediate concerns to keep the Norwegians at bay.

The presence of marine science was recognized as a symbol of soft diplomacy as the re-search vessels were directed towards Greenland. Schmidt in particular, but actively sup-ported by Drechsel and government officials in Copenhagen, sought to exploit the activities of marine research as a means to stake out Danish interests. In this particular case, it is fair to state that Danish fisheries science was a spearhead of Danish foreign policy towards Norway. In addition to the actual research, Schmidt unfolded a consider-able public relations effort lecturing and giving interviews to local stakeholders of the fishing communities and official authorities in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Something old, something new: 200 years of a blue growth agenda

WGHIST contributors

Blue growth is an umbrella concept currently promoted by both national and interna-tional policy frameworks, including the EU and FAO. Overarching goals include balanc-ing the equitable growth and accessibility of marine economies with environmental sustainability and protection of habitats and ecosystem services. Central to successfully balancing these goals is the clear need to address social-ecological relationships between people and ocean resources. Despite the more recent use of the term “blue growth”, these goals associated with it have historical corollaries going back centuries into the human use of marine resources. Understanding how social, environmental, and ecological driv-ers interacted to determine the success or failure of management and policy with such goals through time offers important insights for contemporary blue growth initiatives, including ways forward and lessons learned. Here, we assess examples from history where these overarching goals were successfully balanced, and where they failed, explor-ing the major drivers of success or failure over time.

Aim: While implied, blue growth initiatives do not clearly state how success of these goals depend and are influenced by social, political, and economic aspects of human systems, and their interaction with ecological systems. Looking through time, we aim to leverage this history to understand how elements of blue growth were developed in the past and their outcomes, thereby informing contemporary marine policy targets within the blue growth context. Given current focus, we pay particular attention to the integra-tion of socio-economic dimensions and the ways in which human systems in turn impact management and policy outcomes.

Approach: To review historical practice/behaviours/policy (find historical analogies) and explore what lessons can be learned for contemporary management/policy, using FAO’s blue growth initiative as a contextual framework.

Key message: By looking at how historical governance initiatives have shaped the nature of human interactions with the marine environment, we can learn lessons for blue growth, with particular insight into the interface between human and ecological systems.

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Annex 3: Collaboration with Oceans Past Platform (OPP)

EU COST Action on Oceans Past Platform

Henn Ojaveer

The Action aims to measure and understand the significance and value to European soci-eties of living marine resource extraction and production to help shape the future of coasts and oceans. The Integrative Platform will lower the barriers between human, so-cial and natural sciences; multiply the learning capacity of research environments; and enable knowledge transfer and co-production among researchers and other societal ac-tors, specifically by integrating historical findings of scale and intensity of resource use into management and policy frameworks. The oceans offer rich resources for feeding a hungry world. However, the sea is an alien space in a sense that the land is not. Fishing requires skills that must be learnt, it presupposes culinary preferences, technical ability, knowledge of target species, and a backdrop of material and intangible culture. The Ac-tion asks when, how and with what socio-economic, political, cultural and ecological implications humans have impacted marine life, primarily in European seas in the last two millennia. The Action calls on historians, archaeologists and social scientists as well as colleagues from the marine sciences to engage in dialogue and collaboration with ocean and coastal managers. The Action will develop historical descriptors and indica-tors for marine and coastal management.

OPP consists of the following five Working Groups:

• WG1: Trends in Production and Consumption (see below) • WG2: Coastal settlements (aim to pool and enhance existing knowledge re-

garding four critical issues that combines demographic, economic and envi-ronmental dimensions)

• WG3: Aquaculture (aim: to collect and develop knowledge on aquaculture's impact on ecosystem goods and services and distribution of social and eco-nomic costs and benefits over time, as well as on the shifting perceptions and management of aquaculture)

• WG4: Changing values (economic and cultural) of marine life to society (aim: by documenting the changing relationship of society and marine life to devel-op a comparative

• trans-disciplinary and integrative understanding of the human-ocean system and overall changes in society)

• WG5: Gendered seas (aim: to understand how men and women have used, governed, and changed their marine environment over time).

The most relevant to WGHIST is Working Group 1. The aim of the WG1 is to use archae-ological, historical and more recent catch history information to establish integrated trends in exploitation of key marine species through linking:

• trends with technological development • trends with societal developments such as colonialism, past & present policy

measures

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• the role of marine science insights for production and consumption

WG1 has the following topical focus areas:

i ) Multi-centennial fishery and consumption of charismatic species: case study of tuna in the Mediterranean Sea

ii ) Historical ecology of commercial demersal species: case study in the North Sea, incl. spatial trajectories, fleet/gear dynamics, development and testing of indicators

iii ) Forage fish (such as herring, stickleback) in various marine ecosystems over different time-periods: centennial-scale exploitation and consumption trends, technology development, assessment of trajectories of fishing power.

iv ) Conspicuous marine consumption: case study of oysters in European north-ern seas since the 15th century

In addition to the four topical focus areas, WG1 also:

i ) Develops methods to synthesize the quantitative and qualitative historical evidences to reconstruct changes in exploited populations and ecosystems over time (lead: Adriaan Rijnsdorp);

ii ) Facilitates the collection and inventory of open data sources through stand-ardization of protocols (lead: Ann-Katrien Lescrauwaet)

iii ) Makes explicit how Marine Historical Ecology can guide management (lead: George Engelhard)

Geographic focus areas:

Based on the research interests of participants and also considering the data/information availability, the following areas were considered as a primary focus: North Sea, Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

Countries involved:

Representatives of the following countries participate in WG1 activities: Australia, Bel-gium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and USA.

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Annex 4: Recommendations

1 ) WGHIST recommends continuing collaboration with members from ICES Strategic Initiative on the Human Dimension, to highlight ways in which social and economic data can be integrated into ICES advice. To this end, WGHIST will collate specific examples of published historical data that relate to SIHD aims, and forward these to the group, and will continue to explore opportuni-ties to engage with SIHD. Additional engagement with other working groups on issues of human dimensions, such as the Working Group on Social and Economic Dimensions of Aquaculture (WGSEDA), is also recommended.

2 ) WGHIST recommends continuing discussions between nominated WGHIST members and ICES stock assessment scientists, culminating in a proposal for an ICES Workshop dedicated to furthering the inclusion of historical data into stock assessment methods, including methods for data-limited fisheries.

3 ) WGHIST recommends continued liaison with DIG and the ICES Data Centre to ensure that the WGHIST metadatabase is integrated into the ICES website in a way that ensures the metadata information is available and visible to the sci-ence community.

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Annex 5: Metadata prepared for proposal on stock assessment workshop

This table summarizes the metadata collected by WGHIST to demonstrate data available for a workshop on using historical resources to inform stock assessment, engaging WGHIST and stock assessment scientists.

STOCK DATA ON STOCK

DATA ON FISH-ERY ADDITIONAL DETAILS POTENTIAL USE SCIENTIST

AVAILABLE? WORKING GROUP

Common skate (North Sea)

Survey data Gear and vessel Data poor species, abundance and spatial distribution baselines

Yes WGHIST

Atlantic herring (Scot-land)

Landings Gear and vessel Data poor species, baselines Yes WGHIST

Thornback ray (North Sea)

Survey data Gear and vessel Data poor species, abundance and spatial distribution baselines

Yes WGHIST

Fall herring (Gulf of Riga)

Landings, surveys

Effort and gear Age structure, weight- and length-at-age

Stock assessment targets and baselines Yes WGHIST

Cod (Baltic) Landings, survey

Gear and vessel Baselines Yes WGHIST

Fall spawning herring (North Sea)

Landings, survey

Effort, gear, and vessel

Age structure, size distribution, size-at-age of catch

Stock assessment targets and baselines Yes WGHIST

Multiple species (Bay of Fundy)

Landings, survey

Effort, gear, vessel

Baselines, abundance and spatial distribution, data poor species

Minimal WGHIST

Cod and ling (North Sea)

Landings, survey

Effort, gear, and vessel

Biomass baselines Yes WGHIST

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Multiple (US) Landings, survey

Data poor species, baselines Yes WGHIST

Smooth-hound (Medi-terranean)

Landings Effort, gear, and vessel

Age structure, size distribution Data poor species Yes WGHIST

Multiple species (S. Africa)

Landings, survey

Effort, gear, vessel

Size distribution of catch Data poor species, baselines, distribution of species

Possible WGHIST