Management • Disseminaton • Implementation

Activity Structure

Activities to be carried out through the FinE project will be performed within three major scientific work packages, focusing, respectively, on tasks related to empirical case studies (WP1), genetic analyses (WP2), and eco-genetic models (WP3). Two additional work packages focus on scientific integration across two transversal case studies on cod and sole (WP4) and on practical aspects of coordination, integration, and dissemination (WP5). With two work packages thus explicitly devoted to integrative efforts, this setup ensures that the resources to be invested into the establishment of overarching perspective, results, and products will be commensurate with the complexity of reliably achieving this objective.
Moreover, the three major scientific work packages have been carefully partitioned into individual tasks in such a way that these tasks, to a significant degree, can be carried out without being unduly hampered by complicated and potentially fragile cross-dependences. In addition, each of these three work packages is endowed with a synthetic task – Tasks 1.8, 2.7, and 3.9 – so as to ensure that important integrative efforts can, again to a substantial extent, be carried out within work packages. This setup will stimulate the productive confluence of results across tasks while at the same time minimizing the perils associated with potentially highly ‘breakable’ long-distance links across tasks.
It should thus be evident that, in this manner, a significant amount of coordination, monitoring, integration, and management provisions have been hardwired into the project’s detailed activity structure.

Management Structure

The project coordinator of FinE (Ulf Dieckmann, IIASA) will be responsible for the internal organization and supervision of the development of the project, including the management of activities, communications, and finances in accordance with the project’s objectives. On behalf of the project’s consortium, the coordinator will also be in charge of communicating with the EC’s Commission Services.
The project’s five work packages will be assigned work package leaders as follows:

• WP1 – Mikko Heino, IMR.
• WP2 – Bruno Ernande, Ifremer, and Einar Eg Nielsen, DIFRES.
• WP3 – Ulf Dieckmann, IIASA.
• WP4 – Mikko Heino, IMR (for cod), and Bruno Ernande, Ifremer (for sole).
• WP5 – Ulf Dieckmann, IIASA.

Work package leaders will be responsible for ensuring that expectations and opportunities for research and collaboration are transparently communicated and well understood among all the teams contributing to their work packages, that responsibilities are clearly assigned and kept, that milestones and deliverables are achieved as required, that research plans and budgets are closely adhered to and adjusted as necessary, that problems and questions arising within or between teams are swiftly resolved, that task-based efforts within their work packages are orchestrated and synchronized within and across work packages, and that a synthetic perspective on the eventual integration of individual contributions prevails throughout the entire project.
As detailed in the Annex, each of the project’s teams will be led by an internationally distinguished expert in fisheries research. These team leaders are responsible for carrying out, directly and through delegation to other members of their team, the tasks assigned to their teams by FinE’s research plan. This involves maintaining high scientific standards for all work in their teams, acting as a responsive liaison between their teams and the responsible work package leader, participating in annual consortium meetings unless prevented by exceptional circumstances, utilizing the budgets allocated to their teams in a manner that best contributes to FinE’s objectives in accordance with agreed levels of effort and funding, ensuring timely contributions by their teams towards the established milestones and deliverables, orchestrating work shared between teams with the involved other team leaders, fulfilling the reporting obligations of teams, and resolving any obstacles potentially encountered within their teams or through their interaction with other teams. The individual team members participating in the FinE project will contribute to the tasks assigned to their teams and will take part in annual consortium meetings and task-related meetings as advised by their team leaders.
The overall control and decision-making body of the FinE project will be a steering committee comprising all work package leaders. After about 12 and 24 months, or as the need arises, the steering committee will assess the overall project in terms of progress, results, and plans. These assessments will be based on discussions between steering committee members and each team leader, which will provide an opportunity for the systematic evaluation of each team’s progress with regard to the assumed responsibilities. Mutual feedback on the functioning of the consortium will be exchanged, and, if applicable, solutions for identified difficulties will be discussed. Following these discussions, the steering committee may provide team leaders with a brief summary, containing action items if applicable. Upon an evident need, these discussions may be repeated at shorter intervals. As a result of the project-wide evaluations, the steering committee may propose adjustments to the project’s structure and budget. The steering committee will always consult team leaders before taking decisions that have critical implications for their teams. Similarly, team leaders will always consult the network coordinator when local decisions have implications for the consortium at large.

Communication Provisions

Successful communication between all teams involved in the FinE project will be ensured through a suite of mutually complementary means:

• Email announcements by work package and team leaders and email-based discussions between participating team members will provide the generic day-to-day communication platform within the FinE project.
• A dedicated web site will serve as the project’s ‘public face’, providing salient information about the project’s activities, in addition to general information about fisheries-induced evolution. In addition, the web site’s password-protected internal part will provide a flexible clearing house for the swift and smooth exchange of information emerging across the entire FinE network. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.1 in WP5.
• A project leaflet will be prepared by the coordinator, containing general information about the work programme, participants, expected results, and exploitation strategy. This leaflet will be used on various occasions to inform a wide audience about the project’s aims and scope. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.2 in WP5.
• The solicitation and potential discussion of input for the preparation of progress reports will be a means of structured communication between all teams and FinE’s steering committee. The evaluation discussions described above will be strongly based on this input. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.6 in WP5.
• Annual consortium meetings will bring together team leaders and team members across all tasks and work packages, to communicate achieved results and to plan next steps. To a good extent, task-related discussions and planning will take place during these meetings, and the provision of support and advice in cases in which a partner is facing scientific, technical, or practical difficulties will be an important function of these meetings. The project’s kick-off meeting will launch the project and facilitate initial contacts, as well as good working relationships, among all partners. The kick-off meeting will serve as FinE’s first annual consortium meeting. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.3 in WP5.
• To the degree necessary for the effective execution of tasks, visits of individuals will be arranged between teams. Such visits will provide important points of personal contact between participants collaborating between teams and will thus foster the orchestration of shared responsibilities, as well as the preparation of joint publications.
• On occasion, it may become important to bring together, in the form of small task workshops, all teams involved in the work on a shared task. To prevent the project’s organization from becoming too heavy, such workshops will, however, be the exception rather than the rule, as individual visits and the annual consortium meetings are likely to suffice for ensuring the successful orchestration of research efforts.
• Several tasks will lead to the collaborative preparation of joint scientific publications among the members of different teams. The investment of efforts into this particular type of deliverable will be encouraged by the network coordinator, since the peer-review process associated with publications in leading scientific journals will provide a welcome extra source of input and quality control for the project’s research. Since all FinE participants are committed to the open sharing of scientific information, the wide accessibility of this type of deliverable will be regarded as an important advantage.
• The preparation of the project’s final report and recommendations will result in considerable discussions and scholarly exchange across the entire network of FinE participants. To take full advantage of the complementary skills and pluralistic expertise held within the FinE network, the process of arriving at the final report’s conclusions and recommendations will have to be devised carefully, so as to be maximally inclusive. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.9 in WP5.
• An international conference on fisheries-induced evolution will be organized to provide a high-profile platform for the communication of FinE’s research results. In addition to fostering exchange between teams, this conference will engage all FinE researchers in a dialogue with international experts from outside the network. The network’s steering committee will explore options for publicizing the most important proceedings of this conference, for example, through preparing a special issue of a renowned international scientific journal. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.7 in WP5.
• The preparation of a booklet on fisheries-induced evolution will provide another important means through which the FinE project will encourage the structured exchange of information across teams, since strategies for presentation style and content will have to be discussed and, as far as will be possible, agreed on. For more information, please see the description of Task 5.8 in WP5.

The various channels of outlet described above are characteristic of how the knowledge, intellectual properties, and other innovations arising from the FinE project will be shared among teams and systematically made available to much wider audiences.

From the management-oriented perspective, the thirteen governmental and academic institutions participating in the FinE project will greatly enhance the transfer of knowledge gathered on fisheries-induced evolution to practical impacts on fisheries science and policy. Many of these institutions provide their national authorities and the fishing industry with information about the status of living marine resources, and represent their countries in national and international fisheries management forums. On the basis of their own stock assessments and of quotas proposed by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), these agencies prepare and distribute scientific advice before and during the annual fisheries negotiations between EU countries and other countries (including Iceland, Norway, and Russia).
The scientists involved with FinE are actively participating in this work. More specifically, many of them are involved in the work of various ICES expert groups, including stock-oriented working groups, but also methodological working or planning groups (e.g., the Planning Group on Commercial Catch, Discard and Biological Sampling; and the Workshop on Sampling Design for Fisheries Data) and thematic working groups (e.g., the Working Groups on Application of Genetics in Fisheries and Mariculture; and the Working Group on Ecosystem Effects of Fishing Activities). These important involvements extend to the formulation of resulting management advice in the ICES Advisory Committee on Fishery Management (ACFM) and the ICES Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF, Commission Decision No. 93/619/EC).
Activities within the FinE project clearly gain synergy from contacts taking place through the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Scientific advice needed in the management of marine resources and in formulating new fishing policies in Europe is, to a large extent, provided by ICES. ICES functions by acting as a meeting place for a community of more than 1600 marine scientists from 19 countries around the North Atlantic. The knowledge thus obtained is developed into unbiased, non-political advice. The European Community is one of the largest users of this advice, and often places special requests to ICES. This linkage ensures that the scientific results obtained by the FinE network will be disseminated effectively to the scientific community, policy makers, and the different national Ministries of Fisheries.
Dissemination of results will also be ensured through the organization of a first international conference on fisheries-induced evolution. On this occasion, the results of the FinE project will be presented to a wider audience, including fisheries scientists and managers, as well as members of the fishing industry and national representatives. Coverage of the event by the media will also contribute to informing the general public.
In addition to the international conference, dissemination towards a larger audience will be ensured by the production of several written documents: a synthesis of FinE’s two integrated case studies on cod and sole, the final report and recommendations of the FinE project, (these will mostly be written for the benefit of the scientific community, fisheries managers, and the EC’s Commission Services), a booklet on fisheries-induced evolution (which will mostly target fisheries managers, the fishery industry, national representatives, and the interested public), and the policy implementation plan described below (which will provide an executive summary collectively addressing all these audiences).