EU-wide Stakeholder Meeting

The main objective of our first EU-wide workshop was to obtain a common understanding of the benthic problems and issues, and to agree on common definitions and understandings of terms in line with the BENTHIS project. Also the purpose was to present and get feedback on what technological and management initiatives the regional stakeholders have an interest in exploring during the project lifetime.

Discussions revealed that there is a need for clarifying the concept of impact among stakeholders: what is impact, and how should we measure impact? The impacts of fishing that were considered most relevant comprised of discards, food production, removal of biomass (fish and benthos), natural resilience, catch functions, food web, biology, physical and biodiversity. The answer and value judgement of the “What is impact?” question depends on whether one approaches the benthic ecosystem from a “wilderness” perspective or from a “production” perspective.