Summary of enforcement actions taken by the Marine Directorate: EIR release

Information requested

A list of enforcement actions taken by the Marine Directorate against vessels in Scottish waters from 1st January 2022 to the date of processing the request, inclusive.

For each enforcement action please include:

• the date it was brought
• the type of enforcement action (e.g. FPN, advisory letter, request to leave area),
• the alleged or suspected illegality which prompted the action,
• the location of the vessel at the time of the suspected or alleged illegality (this needn't be coordinates, but should make reference specific reference to the nearest port or landmass, e.g. "40 miles west of Foula, Shetland).

If the action was to refer the suspected illegality to another authority please say which authority it was referred to.

If the action was to issue a fixed penalty notice, please include the amount the FPN was for, and when it was paid.

Please also include the name of the vessel which the action was taken against. If that is not possible please at least provide:

• the vessel's port of registration
• it's size (if necessary you can provide sizes in bucketed categories, e.g.: <10m, 10- 20m, ... 90-100m, >100m)

In anticipation of some exemptions your team might look to apply to this request I would like to refer to a previous request under the reference number EIR 202300361135 which requested all enforcement documents from a year. If it is less time consuming for your team to provide a list of enforcement actions please provide all enforcement documents from the date range specified.

We contacted you on 5th February 2025 to ask if, due to the volume and complexity of information that you requested which might result in your request being refused as manifestly unreasonable, if you would you be content to refine your request so that the location information was less specific.

You replied on 5th February 2025 stating that you would be content for us “to provide the name of the fishery office which took enforcement action on land, and/or the ICES statistical square where enforcement action was taken at sea in lieu of the location as I described it in my original request.” and to “provide the name of the fisheries office which handled each action and include, where you have it, any information routinely recorded for the location where a vessel was contacted by enforcement at sea, whether that be ICES square orsomething more granular which you routinely record?”

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 enclose a copy of the information you requested. The attached spreadsheet contains details of infringements detected during inspections by coastal fishery offices and Marine Protection Vessels (MPVs) between 1st January 2022 and 7th February 2025.

Due to the way the data is held, it has not been possible to reliably match vessel names and ports of registration to infringements recorded when extracting the data, however as per your request, the data has been grouped into vessel size categories.

Please note that there is some duplication in the data which can occur for a number of reasons. The most common is where one office or MPV records a suspected infringement and another office or MPV records a follow up action, for example, where an MPV detects a net infringement, and the master is required to present a new net at a coastal office for inspection.

If an infringement of fisheries legislation is found during an inspection, one of the following actions can be taken:

• Verbal Rebrief (advice) given
• Advisory Letter issued
• Warning Letter issued
• Further Investigation undertaken

A combination of the above actions may be recorded multiple times on the same date. This may be either where actions have been taken against different vessels, or where several suspected infringements have been recorded against the same vessel. In the latter case the resulting action is recorded against each infringement, for example, one advisory letter may be issued covering several infringements but is recorded against each one. This can, again, cause some duplication in the data making it appear as if more letters have been issued than have been sent out. Where more than one suspected infringement on the same date is marked as having been referred for further investigation, these have been manually separated into individual rows so the outcome of each can be provided, as per your request (in column J on the ‘List of Coastal Infringements’ tab of the spreadsheet and column L on the 'List of Marine Infringements’ tab).

Following further investigation, where the Marine Directorate obtains evidence, to the criminal standard, of contravention of fisheries law it may report the case to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) for consideration of prosecution, or alternative appropriate action as it sees fit. Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) are civil fines which Marine Directorate are able to offer rather than pursuing a formal prosecution. Further information about the Marine Directorate’s use of Fixed Penalty Notices can be found at: Marine compliance: fixed penalty notices - gov.scot. An explanation of offence types can be found at: Marine and fisheries compliance: list of fixed penalty notices - gov.scot. These provide an indication of the offence that closest matches the identified infringement and the wording may not completely match the details of the actual infringement detected as there are not specific codes which relate to every possible offence.

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.

EIR 202500450316 - Information released - Infringements

File type

Excel document

File size

292.8 kB