Baltic Sea (Central) - Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries

Despite the need to consider an ecosystem approach to marine and fisheries management, including ecosystem aspects in fisheries management and scientific advice in the Baltic Sea has been fairly limited, e.g., including species interactions, zooplankton availability and hydrographic conditions in recruitment forecasts and stock assessments of Baltic Sea fish stocks (ICES 2011). However, in order to steer towards an ecosystem approach to management, a number of extended multi-species models and food-web models are readily available for guiding scientific advice (see summary in ICES 2009). By applying an ensemble of models and tools, structural (model) uncertainty can be accounted for and more robust management advice may be provided (ICES 2009; Gårdmark et al. in prep).