September 16, 2013 — The following was released by the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute (MFI):
Dear Colleagues:
We invite you to participate in a Workshop hosted by the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute (MFI) on "Fishery Monitoring and Survey Selectivity" on October 9-11 at Waypoint Event Center in New Bedford.
In collaboration with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the MFI is coordinating an End-to-End Review of New England Groundfish Stock Assessments, and this workshop topic was identified at a recent scoping meeting in that process (report attached). An executive summary of the first workshop on environmental change is also attached as an example of the expected output from the second workshop. The monitoring workshop is intended to complement the recent NEFSC review of the data collection programs by reviewing the practical aspects of data collection as well as their use in stock assessments and groundfish sector monitoring, including perspectives from the fishing industry on improving programs.
The general agenda is:
– Survey gear, sampling design and protocols will be presented by NEFSC scientists and others on Wednesday afternoon October 9.
– Fishery monitoring programs (dealer reporting, logbooks, observers, port sampling) will be presented by NEFSC and NERO scientists and others on Thursday October 10.
– General discussion to form conclusions and recommendations on Friday morning October 11.
The meetings are open to all interested parties who register by contacting Arlene Wilkinson awilkinson@umassd.edu, so please forward this announcement to anyone else in your organization or network who might be interested. Please also contact me if you would like the steering group to consider a presentation of your program or your perspective for the agenda. A more detailed agenda will be distributed to registrants in advance of the meeting.
Thanks,
Steve Cadrin and Brian Rothschild
P.S. The 3rd MFI workshop on reference points and uncertainty buffers is scheduled for November 6-8 – please save the dates