Fish farm sea lice counts and treatments applied 2018: EIR release

Information requested

 

You asked for all data held within Marine Scotland which shows sea lice counts and treatments applied, by individual farms, week by week for the full calendar year of 2018.

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.

 

Please find the attached information which is relevant to your request. In relation to the existing policy concerning the regulation of sea lice, the Fish Health Inspectorate may receive information updates from Aquaculture Production Businesses or through our routine surveillance activity. We are therefore providing all of the 2018 data to you again (you have been given much of this information through a previous request - FoI/18/03408), to ensure that any updates to previously issued information are included.

The additional information for the Ornish Island site was provided electronically as it was not available for inspection at the time of a site visit in November 2018. This was due to issues with electronic communication connections in that remote location. The Fish Health Inspectorate do not routinely hold this information.

In addition to the attached spreadsheets, there may be some additional information obtained through the aquatic animal health surveillance activitiy undertaken by the Fish Health Inspectorate. The results of this activity are published quarterly, three months in arrears as part of an active publication plan. You can find further details and the results of that surveillance (which may contain additional information to your request) at the following Marine Scotland web page:

https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Fish-Shellfish/FHI/CaseInformation 

In addition Marine Scotland Science acts as a statutory consultee to the planning process associated with aquaculture developments. The comments which we make and any data relating to sea lice provided in planning application documentation are available on the Council websites:

https://publicaccess.argyll-bute.gov.uk/online-applications/

https://wam.highland.gov.uk/wam/

https://planningandwarrant.orkney.gov.uk/online-applications/

https://pa.shetland.gov.uk/online-applications/search.do?action=simple&searchType=Application

http://planning.cne-siar.gov.uk/PublicAccess/

Scotland’s Aquaculture website also contains information detailing monthly treatment use for sea lice treatments administered. This can be found under the Search the Data tab on the home page and then selecting Fish Farm Monthly Biomass and Treatments.

http://aquaculture.scotland.gov.uk/default.aspx

 

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

foi-19-00167 Information released 1

File type

Excel document

File size

8.0 kB

foi-19-00167 Information released 2

File type

Excel document

File size

16.3 kB