Vessel breached under section 4.7: EIR release

Information requested

• Under the derogation Rules of the terms and conditions of the Trial under section 4.7.

How many vessels have been found to have breached this section and what actions where taking against them?

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 ofInformation (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.

The answer to your question as follows;

The Terms and Conditions that govern the trial state:

4.7 A vessel is not permitted to catch and retain on-board on each day more than 450kgs of razor clams, and a vessel may not have on-board at any time or land more than 450kgs even if the voyage exceeds a day or 24 hour period.

There have been 19 vessels, authorised as part of the electrofishing for razor clam trial, which have recorded landing over 450kg.

The vast majority of these were isolated incidents involving landings of less than 455kgs (i.e. less than 5kgs over the daily catch limit of 450kg). In addition, most of these landings occurred in the early stages of the trial as fishermen adapted to the new daily catch limit.

The actions taken against authorised vessels that breached 4.7 of the terms and conditions, include 10 verbal rebriefs, an advisory letter and a caution for landing over 450kg (this vessel was also removed from the trial). In determining the extent of such action, the Scottish Government regarded, the gravity of the breach, the consequences or possible consequences of the breach and the extent to which previous action was taken on the same offence.

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