A core focus of the group is to provide annual updates on new trends and occurrences of disease in farmed and wild aquatic animals. Updates are provided by national experts for each representative country, meaning that WGPDMO has access to the most up-to-date and relevant information on disease trends. These trends are periodically reviewed, with reports issued that summarize the changes in disease prevalence over a range of years (such as Cooperative Research Report no. 265).
The group is also involved in a wide range of activities such as providing expert knowledge and advice on fish disease and related data to the ICES Data Centre, performing reviews in areas such as parasites in species which pose a hazard to human health and disease-associated population effects of various species.
WGPDMO members also play an important role in both the OSPAR Coordinated Environmental Monitoring Programme (CEMP) for the North East Atlantic and HELCOM (Baltic Sea Environment Commission).
