WEIGHT/SIZE STRUCTURE OF ATLANTIC BLUEFIN TUNA FISHED AND/OR RANCHED IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND NORTHEAST ATLANTIC DURING THE PERIOD 1995 TO 2014 AS REVEALED BY TRADE, MARKET & CORPORATE BIOMETRIC DATA

For a number of years, both ICCAT-SCRS and ICCAT-GBYP have examined the possible use of auction, trade and marked data for scientific purposes. These data are currently not used by scientists and not included in the ICCAT data base because of the need to closely check them, for avoiding uncertainties such as double-counting, use of various types of conversion factors, representativeness of various age classes on the Japanese markets, data coverage, sample representation and many others. The Informal Group on Trade-Market Data which was set during the 2012 Bluefin tuna Assessment Meeting, the SCRS and the GBYP Steering Committee agreed that these important data should be examined by a group of experts, for selecting the reliable and documented data, using all sources for validation, including BCDs, and for making them available to the SCRS scientists. Here, comprehensive trade, market and tuna ranching corporate information, including a vast record of Atlantic Bluefin tuna specimens (with individual and grouped disclosed information on weight/size) that were fished and/or ranched in the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea, from 1995 to 2014, has been recovered and herein presented, to the SCRS. Three distinct sets of data (form 1, forms 2 (a & b) and forms 3 (a & b)) are herein presented for ICCAT-SCRS' evaluation and analysis. All such three sets have been standardized in order to comply with SCRS' data and statistics format requirements and are delivered in MS EXCEL format.