Mammal deaths adjacent to salmon farms in 2017: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00483
Date received: 12 February 2018
Date responded: 16 March 2018

Information requested

Marine mammals (e.g. seals) killed by salmon farms during 2017

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA. This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

The relevant data on seals killed under licence is available from the web-site at the following link:- http://www.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Licensing/SealLicensing

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you any information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the web-site listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

In your request you specifically requested copies of seal licence return forms for 2017. We have moved to an electronic data collection system and there are therefore no longer any return forms. We hold no information on the other aspects of your request – i.e. post-mortems, necropsy reports and data on carcasses. We also hold no information concerning other marine mammals killed at fish farms during 2017.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing these aspects of your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs for the reasons explained above.

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