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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

The workshop on bioeconomic assessment of management measures (WKMSE) was held at the GFCM headquarters, Rome, Italy, from 1 to 3 February 2015. The key objectives of the meeting were to: i) review the existing methodologies to perform Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) simulations and the different harvest control rules used in the GFCM and other RFMOs and ii) assess the biological, economic and social implications of alternative management scenarios for the small pelagic fishery in the Adriatic Sea and the demersal fishery in the strait of Sicily. The workshop was organized immediately before the first meetings of the SAC Subregional Committees for the Adriatic Sea and Central Mediterranean, to which the conclusions of the discussions were reported. The WKMSE agreed on the formulation of simulation models for both case studies and identified a set of management scenarios to be tested, based on existing recommendations or on basic principles (e.g. FMSY and Bpa). A set of simulations was run during the workshop and the whole set of simulations for all management scenarios were completed after the meeting and results were appended to the report. Simulations showed that under current fishing mortality, all stocks analysed remained outside safe biological limits, while under some of the management scenarios tested, stocks moved to within safe biological limits and, in some cases, yields recovered to similar levels than before the management measures were taken.