The redfish challenge

On 14th and 15th of March, a workshop on species identification of redfish was held in the Greenlandic capital Nuuk. During these two days, participants from Greenland, Iceland and Germany looked at the different redfish species and stocks found around Greenland and Iceland. During the workshop, 250 redfish, which had already been genetically identified prior to the workshop, were classified by all participants into the different redfish species using the Institute's own identification routines. In addition, selected morphological characteristics were noted and the animals were photographed for later morphometric measurements.
The aim of the workshop was to test the consistency of visual species identification between the three nations involved in research surveys or intensive commercial fisheries in the area, and to standardise this identification. 
From our institute, Annika Elsheimer, Christian Schulte and Matthias Bernreuther took part, as Germany has been involved in the so-called "German Groundfish Survey" on the Greenland shelf since 1981, where both golden redfish (Sebastes norvegicus) and beaked redfish (Sebastes mentella) are common.
The preliminary result is that the inter-institutional consistency for the determination of beaked redfish is good, while the inter-institutional consistency for the golden redfish is slightly worse. However, the evaluation for golden redfish has not yet been finished, so the results can only be conclusively interpreted once the evaluation has been finalised.

In general, species identification of juvenile redfish was found to be difficult, so more workshops will be held in the future, and there may be a workshop specifically aimed at identifying younger stages of redfish.

We would like to thank the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources for their great hospitality.

Please address your questions about this workshop to Dr. Matthias Bernreuther. 

For questions about the "German Groundfish Survey", please contact Dr. Karl-Michael Werner.