Spurdog is vulnerable to overexploitation. In the Northeast Atlantic, the latest stock assessment indicates that spurdog is currently not overfished, or subject to overfishing.The spurdog fishery in the Northeast Atlantic has changed significantly in recent years. Restrictive management measures, including a zero TAC for spurdog introduced in 2011, resulted in a major change in reported landings. Between 2005 and 2017, landings declined across all ICES subareas, increasing again slightly from 2017 to 2021.This stock was benchmarked in 2021 with a substantial improvement in data available for the assessment. Results from the current model confirm that spurdog abundance declined due to high exploitation levels in the past, coupled with biological characteristics that make spurdog particularly vulnerable to such intense exploitation. This model also confirms that the stock is recovering from a low in the early- to mid-2000s, and is now above MSY Btrigger (336,796 tonnes). Biomass in 2022 was 540,266 tonnes. The current stock is thought to be around 45% of virgin biomass.Fishing pressure on the stock has declined substantially since the early 2000s. The harvest rate (ages 5-30) is currently well below HR MSY (0.043). In 2021 it was 0.0031. ICES advises that when the MSY approach is applies, catches in 2023 and 2024 should be no more than 17,353 and 17,855 tonnes respectively. This is a significant change from the advice for 2021 and 2022 which was for zero catch. This change is due to the recent benchmark which led to a change in the perception of the stock and reference points.
