Fish farms; mortalities, enforcement notices, civil sanctions, and prosecutions: EIR release

Information requested

 

You asked for:

1. In the last five years, how many on-farm farmed fish mortalities have been recorded in Scotland due to treatment losses (mortalities caused by, or believed to be caused by, or contributed to by bath-type treatments, hydrogen peroxide treatments, mechanical treatments such as freshwater, thermo- or hydro-licing treatments, or similar). Please give numbers of incidents and numbers and/or weight of mortalities.

2. In the last five years, how many (i) enforcement notices and (ii) civil sanctions have been issued to fish farm operators or well boat operators under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010? Please provide details and copies of notices.

3. In the last five years, how many (i) enforcement notices and (ii) fixed penalty notices have been issued to fish farm or well boat operators under the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007, as amended? Please provide details and copies of notices.

4. How many prosecutions of fish farm operators or well boat operators have there been in the last five years for offences committed under the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Acts 2007 and 2013 or the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010? Please provide details of any prosecutions, including any fines imposed.

 

Response

 

Marine Scotland does not hold a comprehensive record of mortalities occurring from fish farms operating within Scotland. Therefore we are unable to give you a definitive number of mortalities occurring as a result of any cause, including treatment losses as defined by your request. The information which we do hold, which has either been reported to us through the voluntary reporting regime or obtained through our aquatic animal health surveillance programme is made publicly available through an active publication plan: https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Fish-Shellfish/FHI/CaseInformation

This information is not collated to allow us to answer questions such as numbers of incidents and numbers and/or weight of mortalities attributed to treatment losses. It is information which is obtained and used to supplement aquatic animal disease surveillance. The information that we do hold is publicly available at the link above for you to carry out your own analysis.

For your information, the voluntary mortality reporting regime was introduced in 2015. The detail of mortality reporting has previously been provided in other FoI responses for example FoI/18/01868 and FoI/18/01893. Prior to voluntary reporting, relevant information would have been contained within FHI case inspection sheets.

Please find attached two compliance notices issued under the Marine Scotland Act 2010. In addition to these, in two separate cases, Marine Scotland - Licence and Operations Team (MS-LOT) have issued an advisory letter for a breach of a seal licence – you can find copies of that information available through a published response to FoI/19/00384. MS-LOT have also issued a fixed penalty notice of £2000 (which was paid) for breach of a seal licence. No other enforcement notices or civil sanctions have been issued and no prosecutions have been made, in relation to fish farm or well boat operators under the 2010 Act within the time period of your request.

Please find attached two enforcement notices issued under the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007 (as amended). No other enforcement notices and no fixed penalty notices have been issued to fish farm or well boat operators under the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007, as amended, with respect to the timescale of your request.

You will note that some information has been redacted from that supplied here, because an exception under regulation 11(2) (personal data) of the EIRs applies. The reasons why that exception applied are explained in the Annex to this letter.
You can access responses to previous FoI requests, including those specified above, through the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/

 

REASONS FOR NOT SUPPLYING INFORMATION

An exception applies

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

 

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-19-00412 Information released

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