Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) presentation and scientific observers on wrasse fishing vessels: EIR release

Information requested

MD's response letter, dated 23 October 2024, referred to an item produced by Cefas. Subsequent email enquires established that the material, a graphic, had not been published, and that it had been subject of a presentation.

1. I would be interested to know i) when the presentation was made, ii) to whom and iii) how?

2. Condition 8 of the wrasse fishery licensing scheme requires fishers to accept observers, if requested to do so. iv) Can you tell how on many occasions (by year) these have occurred? v) Who are the observers and vi) what is it that they should observe?

Response

As this response will be published on our website, I want to clarify that this enquiry is a follow up to a previous EIR request from you, which was handled under case reference number 202400433988. We responded to this request on 23 October 2024, and both your request and our response have been published here: Information relating to the Wild Wrasse Fishery: EIR release - gov.scot

The answers to your questions are provided below.

(i) when the presentation was made

The presentation was made on 10 March 2020.

I would like to clarify that the presentation you refer to in your question was prepared by the Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) and contained information that was used to determine wrasse spawning season.

(ii) to whom

The information was presented to a single member of the then Marine Scotland Science (MSS) division. We would like to clarify, that at the time of the presentation, the Marine Directorate was known as Marine Scotland.

(iii) how

By remote conferencing online.

(iv) Can you tell how on many occasions (by year) these have occurred?

To date, no observer trips have been carried out on wrasse fishing vessels.

(v)  Who are the observers?

There are currently no scientific observers assigned to this fishery.

(vi) What is it that they should observe?

Because no observer trips have been carried out on wrasse fishing vessels to date, we cannot answer this question specifically. Information gathered by an observer would be led by specific monitoring and surveillance objectives.

Additional information provided out with the EIRs

Under regulation 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance) we would like to provide some further information that may help improve your understanding of the scientific observer scheme objectives. A blog on the Marine Directorate web page provides useful background information (Marine The Importance of Scotland’s Observers - Marine). The information linked below was released in response to a previous EIR request handled under case reference number 202400403446 and responded to on 8 April 2024: FOI+202400403446+-+Information+Released+-+Scottish+demersal+bycatch+report+2022-2024.pdf (www.gov.scot). You may find this of interest. The full EIR request and our response has been published on our website and can be found here: Data collected by the Fisheries Observer programmes from 2018 until 2023 inclusive: EIR release - gov.scot

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.