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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The meeting of the Working Group on the Analysis of Fisheries Monitoring Data (WGANALYSIS) and of the Working Group on Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems and Essential Fish Habitats (WGVME-EFH) was held in GFCM headquarters, Rome, Italy in hybrid modality on 4–6 December 2023, and focused on the analysis of data collected during different demersal surveys in order to identify the occurrence of essential fish habitats of demersal priority species in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. It was attended by 66 experts from research institutes, universities, national administrations, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and private companies, from Albania, Algeria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, DG-MARE, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia, Türkiye and Ukraine, as well as by members from the GFCM Secretariat. Hands-on sessions were held to assist the experts in running an ad hoc R script prepared to digest the survey data and towards providing outputs on: i) identification of critical life stages, i.e. recruits/spawners; ii) abundance and biomass indices; iii) spatial distribution of the estimated indices by different factors (bathymetry and latitude); and iv) hotspot areas. In addition, the meeting provided a training on the ecological importance of Mediterranean corals and sponges and current threats, on their taxonomic identification, on how to collect information during scientific surveys and on-board monitoring programmes and on how to report data from surveys to the GFCM Data call for VME Indicators.