EastMed - Report of the EastMed Working Group Meeting on round sardinella

The EastMed Working Group on round sardinella met in Bari, Italy, from 1 to 5 July 2019 and was attended by experts from Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus and Italy. The working group main objectives were to take stock and progress with the work being carried to understand the population structure of round sardinella in the Eastern Mediterranean (FISHBONE project) and to define ageing criterion and aging scheme for the species. In view of the upcoming benchmark assessment of the species, the working group also discussed possible sources of bias in the available data for a reliable stock assessment of S. aurita. A section of the meeting was also dedicated to the presentation of the EU-funded project MED_UNITs which aims to contribute to the definition of stock boundaries of priority species across the Mediterranean. The working group discussed the potential collaboration and optimization of protocols between the FISHBONE and MED_UNITs projects.