Fishing vessel data within Luce Bay: EIR release

Information requested

The location of any fishing vessel licenced to use scallop dredges within Luce Bay SAC (between GPS coordinates: -4.411125, 54.67795 and -4.964465, 54.80940) between November 1st 2023, and February 26th 2025.

The data showing at least Latitude, Longitude (ideally decimal degrees to 3 decimal points, and can you let us know which datum you use), day and time of location record (ideally UTC and including at least day, month, year, hour, minute, second) and an indication of whether the fishing vessel was fishing (if this is now operational, we note that it was not during our previous request relating to fishing activity around Papay - if it is not, can you also provide winch sensor data to allow us to ascertain that).

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.

As per your request, we have provided the requested information, including latitude and longitude positions expressed in degrees and decimal minutes and redacted vessel identifiers. This includes the requested information with regards vessel activities. However, due to the constraints of our operating system, we are only able to retrieve data from a predefined area rather than a specific polygon. The following GPS coordinates were used to produce the defined area from which the dataset was extracted 54°52.501N, 004°58.358W – 54°40.589N, 004°58.307W – 54°39.883N, 004°24.430W – 54°51.857N – 004°25.244W. Consequently, this has resulted in larger dataset than initially requested.

Between the 1 November 2023 and 26 February 2025, a total of 11 vessels were identified as Scallop (SCE) dredge vessels operating within the Luce Bay area. Additionally, we have included information regarding days at sea, the tonnage landed, and the value of the catch for these vessels during the specified period, using data sourced from statistical square 38 E5.( Marine Scotland - National Marine Plan Interactive) Again, please note this has resulted in a larger data set then what was requested.

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above.

If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.

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.