Engine power range of vessels sighted in data released for a previous request: EIR release

Information requested

• If it is possible to also include engine power range of vessels sighted in the data released (for request ref: 202400419321)?
• To enquire the possible reasons that resulted in incorrect date formats and incorrect positions of sightings (some data points are on the land and some data points are with incorrect date format, such as 7/20/2019 and 8/28/2016)?
• and if it is possible to receive fishing vessel sighting data without these errors?

Response

I enclose a copy of the information you requested.

The answer to your questions is that the date formats appear to have erroneously changed when saving the data as an Excel spreadsheet as the original data extracted does not contain any incorrect date formats. The latest data extracted in response to your current request which included the additional power column (attached) does not contain any dates in an incorrect format.

With regards to the data points that are showing on land there may be a few explanations as to why this is so. The data originally released to you (request ref: 202400412230) had the co-ordinates in degrees and decimal minutes format DD°MM′MM. however, you subsequently asked for them to be provided in decimal degrees DD.dddddd° (request ref: 202400417480). When the coordinates were converted from DD°MM′MM to DD.dddddd°, it has created a higher number of decimal places, giving a greater level of accuracy than it was originally recorded with. This is likely to also be the case with the 2011- 2015 data released for request ref: FOI/202000016609.

A certain amount of error may also occur if using a different reference Datum or a different base map to plot the positions from that which was originally used to take the co-ordinates. An variance in accuracy can also occur depending on the equipment being used to take the position e.g. if the source GPS at the time only had 3 satellites connected giving a higher error range than when it has 4 or 5 satellites connected. There is also the possibility that a transcription error may have occurred when recording the information.

I note that the four examples you provided are showing as being on islands that form part of the Orkney Islands so a variation in the co-ordinates caused by any, or a combination of, the above factors could be enough to move the location from the sea onto the land.

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.

EIR 202400426374 - Information released - Annex

File type

Excel document

File size

6.3 MB