Wettelijke Onderzoek Taken WOT-05 Visserijonderzoek: Werkafspraken en werkplan 2012

In DLO-programme WOT-05 Fisheries Research, statutory tasks are carried out which are related to Dutch and international legislation in fisheries management and aquaculture. The present programme started in 2002 and has been evaluated in 2010. In 2010 a new agreement has been established between the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation (EL&I) and DLO to extend the programme to the period 2011-2015 with some modifications. The main product of the programme is the provision of advice on fishery management and resource conservation to the Ministry, in particular the Directorate of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agribusiness (EL&I-AKV). Many of the projects in this programme deal with extensive data collection, which forms the basis for the advice. These projects include the compulsory collection of biological data required by the DCF7. The programme is carried out by the Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies (IMARES) and the Centre for Fisheries Research (CVO) both in IJmuiden (The Netherlands). The programme manager is drs F.A van Beek. Fisheries policy makers and managers are, like in most other policy areas, dependent on information. The present programme provides biological information for the management of fisheries and aquaculture in open systems. The aim of the programme is to contribute to the collection of essential data needed for the management of fisheries, fish stocks and aquaculture through sampling programmes in as well marine and inshore areas. The data collection includes sampling programmes on fish species landed in fishing ports, discard and by-catch monitoring programmes on board of commercial vessels and scientific surveys using research vessels. In addition monitoring programmes on shellfish (bivalves) are carried out in coastal waters, annually, to estimate the biomass of these resources. The data will be used to provide advice on management. The advice on marine stocks and fisheries is based on international data and assessments carried out by international working groups. The main international frameworks in which this is done are ICES and STECF. These frameworks also play a dominant role in the co-ordination of the marine research. Within the programme 10 different projects can be distinguished. These are listed in the text table. The projects each may consist of several sub-projects. A small part of the available resources of the programme is not allocated to defined projects but will be used for dealing with ad hoc requests for information from the Ministry. In addition to the projects listed in the table, the management of the programme is run as a separate project. Part of the activities in this programme are linked to the National Programme for 2011-2013 which describes the activities that will be carried out by the Netherlands in the EU Data Collection Framework (DCF). This report contains a description of the work which will be carried out in 2012, including an allocation of the available budget over the different projects.