Buccinum undatum landings into Orkney between 2021 and 2024: EIR release

Information requested

I have been trying to get hold of the landings of Whelk (Buccinum undatum) for Orkney from between 2021 to 2024. I have checked the sea fisheries stats, but they seem to not breakdown to species level landings for whelks.

Response

All of the whelk landings into Orkney between 2021 and 2024 were recorded as species Buccinum undatum. In 2024, 236 tonnes of whelks with a value of 203 thousand pounds were landed into Orkney.

Most of the information you have requested, the landings data for 2021 to 2023, is available from line 170 in table 32 of the supplementary tables to the Sea Fisheries Statistics publication. This is available on the Scottish Government website at:

Supporting documents - Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2023 - corrected March 2025 - gov.scot. 

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. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Additional information provided out with the EIRs

The 2024 data is early pre-statistics release management information (prior to provisional statistics publication), it may be incomplete and could be subject to substantial changes. Based on the species codes entered into the fisheries database, all of the whelks included in the publication are either Buccinum undatum or Busycon spp. More than 99 per cent of whelks landed into Scotland are recorded as Buccinum undatum. All of the whelks landed into Orkney were recorded as Buccinum undatum.

For more information on the Sea Fisheries statistics data and for general fisheries data enquiries please contact MarineAnalyticalUnit@gov.scot.

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