Marine Scotland suspected fisheries offences: EIR release

Information requested

1. Please could you tell me from which date it was the policy of the Marine Directorate (or Marine Scotland) to sell fish or shellfish seized from vessels accused of fisheries offences onto merchants.

2. Please could you provide me with an itemised list of all such seizures from the date provided in response to part one of this request, through to the date at which you begin to process this request. For each seizure, please list the date it took place, the relevant geographic office which carried the seizure out, the species of the catch (for mixed catches please include each species with the corresponding weight seized), whether it was sold on to a merchant and, if it was, what it was valued at. In these cases, please also provide the date at which the Marine Directorate/Marine Scotland received such payment.

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.

In response to from the date at which the Marine Directorate / Marine Scotland sell seized fish or shellfish from vessels accused of fisheries offences the authority for Scottish Ministers to dispose of such catch is currently derived from the Aquaculture and Fisheries Scotland Act 2013.

Prior to this, the power to seize and sell forfeited catch was provided under earlier legislation:

• Inshore Fishing (Scotland) Act 1984,
• Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967 (Section 15)
• Sea Fisheries Act 1951 (section 20)

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. Records for sales were cleared at the end of the financial year 2022, there have been no new incidents where fish has been seized and sold on behalf of Scottish Ministers. Therefore, we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies are explained below.

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 because the Scottish Government is not responsible for the collection of this information.

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 seizures of fish clearly, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.