Meeting report
Madrid, the 6th to 8th of November 1997

A general meeting of the Medits programme has been held in the CSIC Headquarters in Madrid the 6th to 8th of November 1997 with the participants named below :

The chairman opened the meeting and made the apologies for some colleagues who intended to participate but were unable to join the meeting.

Dr Lopez Jamar, assistant Director of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), welcomed the participants and expressed the interest of the IEO for the Medits programme as a useful contribution to the fisheries management in the Mediterranean Sea. He expressed his wish that the meeting would succeed.

The meeting progressed on the agenda presented below.

The general co-ordinator confirmed that the main co-ordinators sent a proposal to the European Commission (in reply to the last DG XIV Call for proposals for studies) for the continuation of the Medits surveys in 1998-2000. Generally, the project has been agreed but, due to financial constraints, the next project will be limited to the next two years (1998 and 1999). This new project has been finalized during a meeting in Brussels the 23/10/1997 between EC-DGXIV’s officials and all the members of the Medits Co-ordination Committee (CC). During this meeting, the EC-DGXIV’s officials recalled their wish for the continuation of the surveys programme and their attention for the work which will be presented during the symposium in Pisa (March 1998) concerning the elaboration of the data and their usefulness for the fisheries management in the Mediterranean.

The 1998-1999 surveys will be conducted using the same organisation and the same protocols as for the previous ones. Nevertheless, a few complements will be introduced. Till now, only biological parameters were systematically collected by all the teams during the surveys. For the next surveys, it has been decided to standardize and generalize the collection of information on the water temperature during the hauls, as a basic environment indicator. This will be done by using a system (like archival tags) to be fixed on the trawl. With a device which records simultaneously time and depth, it should possible to have an information on the temperature all during the hauls, including the shooting and the hauling of the gear. A first investigation on the available systems has been done thanks to the contribution of our colleagues from Bari (particularly N. Ungaro). The CC will choose between the different available devices after the final approval of the general project.

Concerning the enlargement of the programme towards other areas, preliminary contacts have been managed with Malta. If they succeed, the Malta area might be included in the next surveys. In another way, if a support of the COPEMED programme is given, the Spanish vessel (Cornide de Saavedra) would be used for a few days survey in the Moroccan area of the Alboran Sea.

The co-ordinator informed the assembly that the CC decided to end the Methodological group by the end of this year.

To continue to favour the exchanges between the different partner countries, the CC suggested that the next general Medits meeting will be held in Croatia (Zagreb or Split) during November 1998. The Croatian colleagues were invited to consider their availability for the organisation of such a meeting.

The co-ordinator of the DMS programme, C.Y. Politou, informed the participants that this programme officially began on the 01/04/1997. A first version of the Medits DMS software constructed by the NCMR has been circulated to the project participants in a CD form. This software is also available through the internet site of the project which is maintained by the NCMR. C.Y. Politou also explained the progress of the project as detailed in the report of the meeting of the group in Athens (03/10/1997, see Appendix I).

Information on the project of a general Medits web site which will include a public and a restricted area was given by F. Corsi. This site will be managed by the University of Roma, through the following internet address: http://www.gisbau.uniroma1.it/medits

The discussion confirmed the interest for this web site. It was also reminded that all the information to be included in this site, particularly in the public area, will have to be approved previously by the Medits SC. The persons in charge of the project were invited to prepare a detailed proposal in order to achieve this objective (action : F. Corsi, by the end of November 1997).

Concerning the interface within the FIGIS project (task 2), E. Ferrandis explained that he intended to present his proposals to the co-ordinator of the DMS project by the end of November 1997.

L. Fiorentini presented the provisional results obtained during the four trips conducted between May 1996 and August 1997 in the Adriatic and in the Tyrrhenian Seas (R/V Lo Bianco and L’Europe) by the project on Efficiency and Selectivity of the Medits gear. He also showed some rushes prepared by P.Y. Dremière from the video views collected during the project. The final results will be presented next year during the symposium in Pisa.

The study was done mainly by hauls carried on alternatively with the Medits gear and an Italian professional gear. The selectivity in the different parts of the gear was tested using small bags with small mesh size fixed at different parts of the gear.

During one of the campaigns, the technologists tested the efficiency of the device for a remote-controlled closing of the trawl (Genisea system). As the results were not fully conclusive, the CC decided to postpone the utilization of such a system.

For the comparison between the gears, three sets of data have been considered : (i) day sampling with the Medits gear, (ii) day sampling with the Italian gear, (iii) night sampling with the Italian gear. The first results on a few important species like Nephrops norvegicus show that the highest yields are obtained during the night. For this species, the day yields with the Medits gear appear lower than those with the Italian one.

As a sampling gear is necessarily a compromise among different constraints, the discussion underlined the usefulness of the technological studies particularly on the two following ways : (i) to compare the efficiency of the different gears used in the area and (ii) to improve the quality of the biological estimates, particularly taking into account the catchability of the different target species by the sampling gear.

The assembly was informed that the technical organisation of the symposium in Pisa (March 1998) made good progress owing to the contribution of our colleagues from Livorno (Dr. de Ranieri).

A total of 46 tittles have been proposed after the first call for papers. Before the deadline for the abstracts (31/10/1997), only 22 abstracts were received. The authors from the Medits group were strongly invited to confirm their proposals. For those scientists, the final deadline was moved back to the 14/11/1997. The deadline for the presentation of the manuscripts of the papers was postponed to the 15/01/1998. It was underlined that this date has to be considered as the extreme limit for the receipt of the papers.

The discussion highlighted the importance to obtain contributions of scientists from outside the Medits group. The CC has worked in that way by presenting a paper on the Medits programme to the last ICES Annual Scientific Conference in Baltimore (September 1997) and by circulating the second announcement of the Pisa symposium inside this meeting. As a result, three scientists : Dr Sparholt (ICES team), Dr H. Heessen (Netherlands, Chairman of the IBTS group) and Dr. A. Frechet (Canada) have expressed their interest to take part in the symposium. Contacts are in progress to favour their attendance in the meeting. In another way, the CC asked for Prof. Relini to invite Dr. J Caddy and Dr. P. Oliver (FAO) to take part in the symposium.

The CC will have also to carefully considered the organisation of the round table which will be held the last morning of the meeting. For the time being, no final decision has been taken on this.

A registration form will be circulated during the next December.

Following the recommendation by A. Laurec during the last general Medits meeting (Paris, November 1996), a proposal for a pilot project on landings sampling in the Mediterranean has been presented in reply to the last EC-DGXIV call for proposals. This project which involve teams from Italy, Greece, Spain and France is co-ordinated by Prof. A. Tursi (University of Bari). Presenting this project, A. Tursi specified that he was waiting for the final decision on acceptance by the Commission. Nevertheless, he hoped that this project will begin at the beginning of the next year. He also highlighted that, as this project is only a pilot one, only a few ports in a few different seas will be considered. He also specified that the first step of the work will include an analysis of the experience yet gained in the area on this question.

D. Levi informed the assembly on the existence of a network leaded by a Danish scientist to raise the level of taking into account species interactions and the effects of a fluctuating environment in fish population dynamics. A presentation of this concerted action is given in appendix II.

As decided during the previous SC in Trani (25/05/1997), the results of the 1997 survey will be presented in the same way as for the previous ones to favour the comparisons between the years. The final report will be prepared including the reports of the 1996 and 1997 surveys.

The different regional co-ordinators were warmly thanked for their efforts in the preparation of the data files and tables. Actually, the quality of the data sets sent to Sète continued to strongly progress, making much more easier their compilation to prepare the report. Like this, an important part of the preparation of the data sets might be achieved before the present meeting. Particularly, it has been possible to make available for this meeting a set of tables regrouping abundance and biomass indices obtained for each of the reference species for each of the four years (1994-1997), permitting the inclusion in the final report of an analysis of the variations between the four years.

The co-ordinator reminded that, as decided during the last SC, the SC members have to send to him the list of the papers which have been written by their groups using the Medits data since the beginning of the programme. They were invited to send this information (by e-mail) before the 22/11/1997 to permit its inclusion in the final report.

A common analysis of the data has been carried on by three sub-groups which worked simultaneously during this meeting. The reports of those groups will be included in the final report. Those groups were constituted by the following scientists :

The participants were invited to consider or remind the following dates which should interest the Medits partners :

RC : Action by the Regional co-ordinators

The Co-ordinator thanked L. Gil-de-Sola and and the IEO authority for their support and for the quality of accommodation provided to the group during the meeting. He highlighted that the common analysis of data as done during this meeting is an important way to progress towards a common knowledge of the fisheries resources in the Mediterranean. He warmly thanked the participants for their useful contribution in the meeting and especially in this particular task.

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