In the scientific community working on fisheries advice, there's a long standing claim, from biologists that economic models don't take into account the full complexity of the stocks' dynamics, and from economists that biological models don't take into account the economic effects of management and the fleet's adaptive strategies. The final outcome is the lack of an integrated bioeconomic modelling platform that takes into account the full complexity and dynamics of stocks and fisheries, as well as the interaction between the availability of resources and their exploitation.

The 2012 STECF Expert Working Group (EWG 12-02), dealing with Baltic and Cod multi-annual management plans requested JRC to assess the possibility of extending Fcube (Ulrich et al., 2011), a multi-species multi-fleet projection algorithm for scenario testing of TAC and effort management options, and merging it with Fishrent (Salz et al., 2010, 2011), a bioeconomic model that aims at optimizing the long term rent from fisheries.

On the 19th-23rd of November of 2012 JRC organized a workshop on bioeconomic modelling (WKBEM) in Ispra, Italy, with the following ToR:

• Test FLBEIA API
• Condition a model based on North Sea mixed fisheries
• Provide feedback on software limitations and further work

FLBEIA is an FLR package that implements a framework for bioeconomic modelling.

Parallel to testing FLBEIA, WKBEM explored the possibility of building a dataset containing both biological and economic information. Such dataset would allow the inclusion of economic dynamics in an operating model, a major step forward to integrated bioeconomic MSEs. On the other hand, it would expose shortfalls and limitations of the data and methodologies.

To carry out this exercise the group used two datasets:

• the STECF economic dataset published in the 2012 Annual Economic Report;
• the ICES WGMIXFISH dataset with stock assessment results for the major demersal stocks in the North Sea and Fcube projections for distinct management scenarios.