Disease Connectivity in Marine Aquaculture (2012-2021): EIR release

Information requested

A number of pieces of information associated with disease connectivity between marine aquaculture fisheries in Scotland. Specifically, your request asked for the following, relevant to a time period from 2012 to 2021:

• Date of disease outbreaks (including sea lice) including when they were first reported and when they were resolved.
• Location (site name/latitude and longitude/eastings and northing/ OS grid reference)
• Disease name and type (viral/parasitic/bacterial etc) and strain if available
• Species affected (age and size of affected population)
• Number of mortalities
• Management and response (treatments or quarantine etc)

In addition, you also asked for any records on inactive fisheries which were operating between 2012 and 2021, along with the dates that they closed.

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.

Response to your request

Some of the information you have requested is available from various websites and publications and further detail is provided on this below. 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.

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 parts of your request your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies are explained in the Annex to this letter.

In accordance with our duty to advise and assist under regulation 9 of the EIRs, we are providing further context along with the following information and details of some wider publications which may be useful
to you.

Information provided and some further context

Listed disease

We hold some information relating to the detection, control, and eradication of serious listed diseases and this is made available through the publication of epidemiology reports where these have been conducted. Throughout the time period of your request, one situation is relevant involving a published epidemiological report:

In 2012 Viral Haemorrhagic Septicaemia virus (VHSv) was isolated from wrasse species used as cleaner fish (to facilitate with sea lice control) on a number of Atlantic salmon farms. Ten cases between 2012 and 2013 contain positive results for the virus. Details of the results obtained, actions taken, and the associated investigation which was conducted are provided through the following:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-marine-freshwater-science-volume-4-number-3-epidemiology-control/pages/7/

In addition, other significant listed diseases and aquatic animal health pathogens identified during the time scale of your request (2012 to 2021) include:

1. Cases relating to Infectious Salmon Anaemia virus (ISAv): Several positive cases were confirmed to involve the non-pathogenic variant of the virus, HPR-0. HPR-0 is not believed to be associated with clinical disease or disease outbreaks and therefore these cases are not directly relevant to your request, which is focused around ‘disease outbreaks’. During the time scale of your request, there have been no cases of ISAv involving the deleted strain of the virus which is associated with clinical disease and mortality.
2. Cases relating to Bacterial Kidney Disease (BKD): Two cases have been identified confirming the presence of clinical BKD. Statutory control measures are enforced only in situations where clinical disease is present. The statutory response does not necessarily require direct measures for eradication.
3. Cases relating to Bonamia ostrea: Five cases have been identified confirming the presence of the parasite Bonamia ostrea occurring within the flat or native oyster (Ostrea edulis), detected in 2019 and 2020. Affected sites are subject to statutory control measures to contain and prevent further spread of the pathogen and the disease.

Information relating to the detection of the above listed diseases, collected through Scotland’s aquatic animal health surveillance programme, is subject to proactive publication on the Scottish Government
website: https://www.gov.scot/collections/publication-of-fish-health-inspectorate-information/.

Please note that publication dates back to the start of 2013. To facilitate you in searching for the relevant cases referred to above the following case numbers, which can be searched for within the published documents, are provided for your reference:

VHS: 20130216; 20130011; 20130006; 20130005; 20130024; (2012 cases which are not published -
20120679; 20120674; 20120673; 20120678; 20120654).

BKD: 20160187; 20160202.

Bonamia ostrea: 202200377; 20190394; 20190628; 20190694; 20190396.

There may be other cases within the published information, containing negative test results which might be useful to you. Searching the published information can also be undertaken using aquaculture site name or number to find other cases related to the sites covered by the case numbers above.

Other diseases

Additional pathogens, beyond those referred to above and beyond the recognised listed diseases, can affect marine fish and shellfish farms and can have an impact upon the aquaculture stocks within Scotland.

Information associated with their presence and impact is available through the aquatic animal health surveillance activity undertaken across Scotland by the Scottish Government’s Fish Health Inspectorate – published information as referred to above.

In addition to this, information associated with mortality is available through mortality reports provided to the Scottish Government in accordance with an agreed reporting regime with salmon aquaculture stakeholders. Details of the reporting requirement and the mortality information is also subject to regular publication and can be found on the Scottish Government website, along with the limitations of this data set - https://www.gov.scot/publications/fish-health-inspectorate-mortality-information/

Notification of sea lice numbers along with the measures being implemented to control and reduce levels, where necessary are also reported to the Scottish Government. This is publicly available on Scotland’s Aquaculture website: https://scottishepa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2218824350e5470e8026076d4138da58

The publicly available information referred to above, will contain some details on the specific areas of your request (date of detection or reported, site location, mortality and actions / steps taken to resolve issue including some treatment data). The majority of the information we hold is not comprehensive in nature so may not always provide a full picture of any given situation. This is particularly the case for those diseases which are not listed and also for sea lice which are ubiquitous within the marine environment and associated with farmed and wild salmonid fish.

The published data contains historical sites that were previously active, but which may no longer be in operation. If there are any particular individual sites which you require information on, with respect to the time scale of operation, then please let me know and we can consider what information is held and what can be provided.

Once you have considered the published case information referred to above, please let me know if you require any additional information from the 2012 cases concerning VHSv. We can then consider providing additional information to you relating to these.

I also note that your request covers ‘strain type’ in relation to pathogens found. I have referred above to the strains associated with ISAv. For other pathogens, we do not routinely undertake sequencing to establish a pathogen’s strain once isolated, although this may be done occasionally. 

Further links to publicly available information

Additional mortality and treatment information, recorded monthly, is also available on Scotland’s Aquaculture website. The website of Salmon Scotland also publishes monthly mortality data:

https://aquaculture.scotland.gov.uk/data/fish_farms_monthly_biomass_and_treatment_reports.aspx

https://www.salmonscotland.co.uk/reports

Further information on the Scottish Government website includes details of active statutory movement restrictions and an internet-based register of Aquaculture Production Businesses:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/movement-restrictions-on-fish-and-shellfish-maps-of-designatedareas/

https://www.gov.scot/publications/registers-of-authorised-aquaculture-production-businesses-andauthorised- processing-establishments/

The National Marine Plan interactive (NMPi) may also be a useful website to consult and contains further details on locational information of aquaculture sites, amongst other information:

https://marinescotland.atkinsgeospatial.com/nmpi/

In addition, the following scientific publications may be of interest to you:

Munro, E.S., McIntosh, R.E., Weir, S.J., Noguera, P.A., Sandilands, J.M., Matejusova, I., Mayes, A.S. and Smith, R., 2015. A mortality event in wrasse species (Labridae) associated with the presence of viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus. Journal of Fish Diseases, 38(4), pp.335-341.

Murray, A.G., Berx, B., Christie, A.J., Munro, L.A. and Wallace, I.S., 2020. Modelling temperature and fish biomass data to predict annual Scottish farmed salmon, Salmo salar L., losses: Development of an early warning tool. Preventive veterinary medicine, 178, p.104985.

Annex
Regulation 10(4)(a) – information not held applies

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 have no regulatory or operational requirement to collect, record or hold comprehensive data sets associated with:

• disease outbreaks for all aquatic animal diseases;
• details of the species affected including the age and size;
• the number of mortalities resulting from outbreaks, and;
• the management and response in relation to disease outbreaks.

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 requested relating to disease outbreaks, their impacts and resolution, clearly, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.