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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Workshop on the assessment of management measures (WKMSE) of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) was held in Constanta, Romania, on 13–14 June 2017. The key objectives of the meeting were to: i) review existing and potential management measures for Black Sea turbot fisheries; ii) define a set of management scenarios to be tested; and iii) assess the biological implications of alternative management scenarios for the turbot fishery in the Black Sea. The workshop was organized just before the sixth meeting of the Working Group on the Black Sea (WGBS), to which the workshop conclusions were reported. The WKMSE agreed on the formulation of simulation models and identified a set of management scenarios to be tested, based on existing recommendations and/or on basic principles (e.g. FMSY and Bpa). A set of simulations was run during the workshop; the whole set of simulations for all management scenarios was completed after the meeting and results are appended to the report. Simulations showed that with fishing mortality as of 2014, turbot would remain outside safe biological limits, whereas with some of the management scenarios tested (e.g. the imposition of quotas together with the elimination or reduction of illegal, unreported and unregulated [IUU] fishing), the stock would recover to safe biological limits.