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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Fish Health and Fisheries, Implications for Stock Assessment and Management: The Mediterranean Example

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Although fish health may influence key population-level processes, particularly those dealing with natural mortality, reproduction and growth, which in turn affect stock productivity, there has been little emphasis on the links between fish health and management of marine fisheries. This paper addresses this gap and illustrates how knowledge of fish health provides insight to marine fisheries biologists, stock assessment modellers and managers. The study demonstrates ways in which the consideration of condition (energy reserves) indicators and parasitism adds to improved stock assessment and fisheries management, also in situations of data shortage when standard methods cannot be applied, as it is the case in many Mediterranean fish stocks. Here we focus on seven case studies of different fish species from the Mediterranean and Black Sea.