Cleaner fish and salmon farms: EIR release

Information requested

Information on cleaner fish in relation to their use on salmon farms since 1 January 2023 and went to specify that the request should:

• include emails, letters, internal briefings, press backgrounders, ministerial updates, documents, photos, videos and any other information relevant to the above.
• include any data on mortalities of cleaner fish (wrasse and lumpfish), import statistics, catch reports and any information relating to discussions of new regulations and laws.
• include any information pertaining to discussions of the Sunday Mail article [relating to the thermolicer and published in January 2024], Norwegian Government rule changes and $camon $cotland's letter to Scottish Ministers [calling for a ban on the use of cleaner fish in thermolicers].

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.

On 15 May 2024 we clarified an aspect of your request relating to ‘catch reports’ establishing that this part of the request related to both the wild wrasse fishery and “which salmon farming companies wild caught wrasse or lumpfish go to.”

On 7 June 2024 we extended the deadline for responding by a further 20 working days under regulation 7 of the EIRs due to the complexity and volume of the request which made it impossible to meet the original statutory deadline.

Response to your request

Information provided

I enclose a copy of some of the information you have requested in the format you asked for. This includes but is not limited to: cleaner fish import data; cleaner fish capture data; information relating to cleaner fish mortality and welfare; information relating to wild capture fishery and other information relating to your request.

I have also provided an ‘Index of Enclosures’ detailing the individual documents provided to you and where appropriate, the application of exceptions under the EIRs relating to those documents.

Please be advised of the following with respect to some specific documents:

Document 3a - Wrasse Ministerial Submission. With respect to paragraph 9 and the reference to the PHD on wrasse management, I would like to point out that the consideration of minimum and maximum landing sizes was not undertaken as part of that specific PHD project. The reference to that piece of work as part of the particular project referred to is incorrect.

Document 3a - Wrasse Ministerial Submission. Annex A includes a ‘Report on the Scottish Wrasse Fishery 2021-2022’. This report was published but was subsequently removed due to some data discrepancies. A revised report has now been published on the Scottish Government website – please refer to the reference in Annex 1 of this response. This point is also relevant to Document 32 as the reference to the numbers and tables within that communication are relevant to the report which was removed. Document 32 should be considered with caution and reference to the revised published report.

Document 14a – Cleanerfish Knowledge gap analysis. Please be aware that some of the information within this document is unverified. This is a draft document which contains information relating to knowledge gap analysis concerning cleaner fish. In particular the reference to 82% mortality for salmon is incorrect and should not be referenced as an accurate mortality. We have confirmed this to be the case with the provider of this particular piece of information. As this document has not been reviewed for veracity by the stakeholders to which it relates, it may contain other errors and therefore caution should be used when referring to the same.

Exceptions apply

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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because a further exception under the regulations applies, specifically regulation 10(4)(e) – internal communications. The reasons why this exception applies are explained in Annex 2 to this letter.

Publicly available information

Some of the information you have requested is available from publicly available information resources and many of these have come to light through our searching activity when handling this request. These are presented in Annex 1 of this response.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you 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 website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above.

If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.

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.