Publication - FOI/EIR release

Fishing activity in Pentland Firth: EIR Review

Published: 27 January 2025
Directorate: Marine Directorate
Topic: Marine and fisheries, Public sector
FOI reference: FOI/202400444618 Review of 202400444614
Date received: 10 December 2024
Date responded: 10 January 2025

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

Information requested

Original request: 202400444614

1. What fishing activity took place in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth in 2023 and 2024? What wieght of fhsih and shellfish (by species) were landed from this area?

2. What boats were involved?

3. What are the contact details for the owners/operators of these vessels?

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.

I have now completed my review of our failure to respond to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) for:

1. What fishing activity took place in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth in 2023 and 2024? What wieght of fhsih and shellfish (by species) were landed from this area?
2. What boats were involved?
3. What are the contact details for the owners/operators of these vessels?

In accordance with regulation 16(3)(b) of the EIRs, I have also reached a decision on your request.

I apologise for the lack of response to your original requests for information and any inconvenience this may have caused you. This was due to resourcing issues within the local office which are currently being addressed.

In order to help you in the future, please find further information on our website regarding How to request information from the Scottish Government. We ask that you please contact our Central Enquiries Unit (contactus@gov.scot) directly with any information request queries going forwards and these will be transferred to the relevant Portfolio area within the Marine Directorate.

I can now provide our response to your original request.

I have responded to each part of your request separately below.

1. This question has two parts which I have labelled (a) and (b) in my response below.

Please note: the smallest area we can provide fishing information for all vessels is ICES rectangle. For the area mentioned, it is entirely within rectangle 46E6. However this rectangle covers a wider area than the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth.

(a) What fishing activity took place in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth in 2023 and 2024?

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested. Please find an Excel sheet attached titled “EIR 202400444618 – Item 1 – Effort – For release.”

I have supplied fishing effort data for 2023. Fishing effort is a measure of the fishing activity of vessels including the time spent travelling to fishing grounds as well as the time spent fishing. Effort data covers voyages by UK over 10 metre vessels only. The effort is in days and the kwdays is the number of days multiplied by the engine power in kilowatts of the vessel.

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 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 this data is not available for 2024 yet.

Public authorities are not required to create information in order to answer a request. There’s a distinction between creating new information, and compiling information. Where a request can be answered by compiling information from readily-available resources held by the public authority, this is not the same as creating new information. However, if compiling information in order to respond to a request would require skill and complex judgement, it is less likely that the information can be said to be held for the purposes of the EIRs. In order to provide the data you have requested requires editing and running a number of complex and lengthy piece of code, which we would not typically do until the 2024 data is complete as it would present a misleading picture.

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 what fishing activity took place in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth in 2024, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

Additional information provided out with the EIRs

Under regulation 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance) we would like to advise you that we have also included the relevant data for the years 2019 to 2022, in case this is of interest or use to you so you may view data for a longer time series. The 2024 data should be available by end of October 2025 if you would like to submit a new information request after this date.

(b) What weight of fish and shellfish (by species) were landed from this area?

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested. Please find an Excel sheet attached titled “EIR 202400444618 – Item 2 - Landings by species from Pentland Firth – For release.” Information on the weight of fish and shellfish landed in kilograms by species from rectangle 46E6 has been given for 2023 and 2024.

Please note: the 2024 data we hold has been provided in full, but we need to advise you that this data is provisional only, as it is currently incomplete. The reason for this is because there are often delays in receiving landing information for smaller vessels and there are a number of these operating in this area, so the current 2024 data may change considerably when it is finalised in 2025.

Additional information provided out with the EIRs

Under regulation 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance) we would like to advise you that complete provisional 2024 data should be available by end of May 2025 and final 2024 data should be available by end of September 2025, if you would like to submit a new information request after these dates.

2. What boats were involved?

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.

Most of the vessels fishing in this area are small and sole proprietor/owner operated and so we cannot identify these vessels as this would indirectly identify the vessel owners and their location. We are also releasing each vessel’s effort and landings, so we need to release this information anonymously as this information is personal data to the individual in question. However, we have released information on the names and RSS vessel numbers of the vessels fishing in 46E6 that are owned by limited companies as these do not fall under the personal information exception. Please find an Excel sheet attached titled “Limited company names and vessel names”.

Additional information provided out with the EIRs

Under regulation 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance), I have provided a summary of the number of vessels by length group and whether they used creels for 2023 and 2024. This provides some summary context on the number of vessels and gear used in 46E6, which may help place the limited company vessel information in context as a small element of the vessels operating in this area. Please find an Excel sheet attached titled “EIR 202400444618 – Item 3 - Data for release - Number of vessels by length and whether they use traps.” Please note that 2024 data will be incomplete.

3. What are the contact details for the owners/operators of these vessels?

As some of the vessels fishing in 46E6 are owned by limited companies we are able to supply further information as they are not covered by the personal information exception. Therefore, we have supplied the limited company name alongside the vessel name in the Excel sheet attached titled “Limited company names and vessel names”. 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. Contact information on limited companies is available publicly by searching on the Companies House publicly available data at: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/. The company name should be sufficient to enable you to find the most up to date contact information.

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.