Modelling the food web in the Irish Sea in the context of a depleted commercial fish community. Part 2: ICES Ecopath with Ecosim Key Run

This work was undertaken as part of the PhD titled ‘Modelling the food web in the Irish Sea in the context of a depleted commercial fish community’, funded via the Marine Institutes Cullen Fellowship and hosted by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS; accredited by the University of the
Highlands and Islands). The project was designed under the remit of the first ICES Integrated Benchmark Assessment, WKIrish. WKIrish is a multi-year process focussing on improving single-species stock assessments (principally cod, haddock, whiting, plaice, and herring), incorporating a mixed fisheries
model, and developing the integration of ecosystem aspects and working towards an integrated assessment and advice. For complex ecosystem models to provide practical management advice it is preferable that they attain ‘key run’ status, wherein a group of experts assess the quality and performance of a model. This report describes the development of a key run Ecopath with Ecosim
model of the Irish Sea (Figure 0.1), allowing the interested reader to understand the methodology and data used to construct the model and provide guidance for attaining an EwE key run. Importantly, the report is intended to provide transparency to the model construction process and highlight the
limitations of the data and thus the caveats attached to model outputs.