Publication - FOI/EIR release

Wild Fish Monitoring Data: EIR release

Published: 22 February 2024
Directorate: Marine Directorate
Topic: Marine and fisheries, Public sector
FOI reference: FOI/202300374267
Date received: 1 September 2023
Date responded: 19 September 2023

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004

Information requested

“The wild fish monitoring data collected and posted by Fisheries Management Scotland but commissioned by the Marine Directorate is displayed as a pdf by FMS. (https://fms.scot/fish-farming/publications-anddata/).
Please could you supply the data for 2016 to 2019 as excel spreadsheets.”

We sought clarification from you on 5 September 2023 when we advised you that: “the data that you have requested has already been published in CSV format here: Sea trout sweep net sealice counts by rows - Sea lice counts on wild sea trout | Marine Scotland Data Publications. This is downloadable in excel format.”

You responded to us on 6 September 2023 to explain that: “The data published on the Scottish Government website that runs from 1997 to 2019 does not include the weight of the sampled fish. The pdf of the same data for the years 2016 to 2019 published individually on the Fisheries Management Scotland website does include this information and it is the weight of the fish and the number of infested lice that are of interest.”

You then extended your original request by email to us on 8 September 2023 by stating: “Actually it occurred to me that as FMS have published the weights of the fish from 2016, ideally if any more of the dataset from 1997 to 2016 included fish weights, I would be grateful for that too.”

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.

1. I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested in the format you asked for. Please find enclosed four individual excel spreadsheets providing the data we hold for each of the years 2016 to 2019
inclusive, and a separate excel spreadsheet providing the data we hold for the years 2011 to 2015 inclusive.

Under our regulation 9 duty to provide advice and assistance under the EIRs, we would like to add that, due to the gaps in the weight data published by Fisheries management Scotland (FMS), we decided not to use this data or incorporate it into our records as it was incomplete.

2. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing this part of your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies are explained below.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested because we do not hold any fish weight data for the years 1997 to 2010 inclusive.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about fish weight data for the entire period you have requested (1997 to 2019 inclusive), clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

The data files attached are not published and as such are not in a finalised format. The content in these files has not yet been standardised, for example zero counts may be referred to as “0” or left blank.

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.