Marine Scotland – Scallop landing data: EIR release

Information requested

1. The total quantity of scallops landed into Orkney by licensed fishing vessels, broken down by method of capture (i.e. hand-caught vs. dredged), for each year beginning in 2019 to allow trend analysis.

2. The corresponding economic value of these landings, by method of capture and year over the same time period.

3. Additionally, I request the quantity and value of hand-caught and dredged scallops (as above) landed into ports on the Scottish mainland and Shetland, where the catch was taken from the ICES rectangles 46E7, 46E8, 47E7, and 47E8.

4. I also request AIS (Automatic Identification System) data for dredging vessels operating within ICES rectangles 46E7, 46E8, 47E7, and 47E8, for the same time period. Please can you include:

• Vessel identifiers,
• Dates and times of activity within each rectangle,
• Position data (latitude and longitude).

If any part of the AIS data is unavailable for privacy or security reasons, I would still appreciate a version with anonymised or aggregated data. 

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested. Please find a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet attached titled “EIR 202500488848 - Orkney scallop data”.

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. Additionally, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception under regulation 11(2) (personal information of a third party) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reasons why these exceptions apply are explained in the Annex to this letter.

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 AIS data is not available for all vessels fishing in the 4 rectangles identified. Additionally, we have provided information for Scallops (Great Atlantic scallop), but not for Queen Scallops which are a different species.

ANNEX

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

The Scottish Government does not have the information

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 for 2025 because 2025 has not yet finished so the information for 2025 is incomplete.

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 Scallops caught in 2025, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

An exception applies

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information of a third party) 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.

Some of the vessels fishing in the 4 ICES rectangles identified are owner operated vessels so there is limited data we can supply without contravening the data protection principles outlined above.

Therefore, we have provided and anonymised vessel identifier instead of the actual vessel registration number, in order to preserve confidentiality. This protects the personal information on the location of these owner operated vessels, whilst still providing the majority of the information requested.

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 202500488848 - Information Released - Spreadsheet

File type

Excel document

File size

774.8 kB