Number of Scottish and Welsh vessels with authorisation to land bass in 2017 and 2018: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02576
Date received: 20 September 2018
Date responded: 28 September 2018

Information requested

The number of Scottish and Welsh vessels with authorisation to land bass by lines only, nets only, and both nets and lines in 2017 and 2018.

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.

Response

The answer to your question is: there is one Scottish administered fishing vessel currently licensed to fish for Bass with gill nets in 2018, no applications were received in 2017.
In addition to your request you may also be interested to note that; in 2017, 17 Scottish administered vessels recorded landings of small amounts of Bass as by-catch. In 2018, 5 Scottish administered vessels have so far landed small amount of Bass as by-catch. These vessels may land up to a 1% Bass by-catch of their total landings.

We note that you have requested the same information from the Welsh Administration and they will reply to you separately as we do not hold Bass licensing data for their registered vessels.

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