Trawling logbook data: EIR release

Information requested

1. Data of fishing vessel positions where fishing equipment was lowered around Scottish waters over the last 6 years.

2. How many hours each operation with the fishing equipment lasted for.

3. If possible, categorise data by different equipment type and detail the individual vessels by callsign / MMSI number.

4. ERS data around Scottish waters over the last 6 years.

5. Overview of fishing vessels, licenses and registered owner and contact details of vessels submitting this information for us to make further enquiries.

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.

Question 1 – 3

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. 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 we do not record data in relation to vessel positions where fishing equipment was lowered.

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 data of fishing vessel positions where fishing equipment was lowered around Scottish waters, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

However, I have included some information below that you may find helpful.

While we do not record data on vessel positions where fishing equipment was lowered, we do record various amounts of data taken from the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS). Further information on the data we do record and how it can be requested can be found here: Marine and fisheries compliance: vessel monitoring system

VMS systems record data every 2 hours, unless a vessel is in a protected area where the system records data every 30 minutes. This is unlikely to be detailed enough to enable hauling and shooting to be reliably analysed.

It is also important to note that while we record data from VMS which can be requested, access to VMS data is strictly controlled as it is considered to be personal data.

Under the Data Protection Act 2018 vessel owners can request access to their VMS data either in writing (by letter, fax or email) or by completing a VMS Data Request Form (attached to the publication provided above). Representatives of vessels, including masters, can also request VMS data if they have the owner's consent to do so.

Non-vessel owners can request data from VMS also, however, only specific information can be released and, where appropriate, information will be anonymised and subject to redactions under the relevant guidelines before release.

In addition, although they do not contain exactly the information you have requested, you may find the following resources helpful:

• Marine Scotland - National Marine Plan Interactive
• Cefas Data Portal - View

Questions 4 & 5

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under the exception at Regulation 10(4)(b) of the EIRs, a public authority may refuse a request for information if it is ‘manifestly unreasonable’.

The Scottish Information Commissioner’s guidance on the Regulation 10(4)(b) exception here says that there may “be instances where it is appropriate for the Commissioner to consider the proportionality of the burden on the public authority in terms of the costs and resources involved in dealing with a request when considering the application of this exception”.

In this case, carrying out these parts of your request under the EIRs would impose a significant resource and cost burden on the Scottish Government due to the volume of materials that would be considered as a part of said requests. For these reasons, we consider that your requests are manifestly unreasonable and so we are refusing them under Regulation 10(4)(b).

As the exception is conditional, we have applied the ‘public interest test’. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case, considered if the public interest in disclosing 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 all ERS data from around Scottish waters for the last 6 years, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring the efficient and effective use of public resources by not incurring excessive costs when complying with information requests.

You may however wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order to make it more manageable. For example, this could be done by:

• Reducing the time range for the data requested and/or
• Specifying particular types of ERS data, rather than every aspect of data relating to all vessels and/or
• Specifying particular geographical positions within Scottish waters that you are interested in.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website here.

In addition, as noted in our response to Q1 – Q3 of your request, we treat some of the information submitted to us by fishing vessels via elogs, FISH1 and VMS etc. as personal data, so there are restrictions on what we can release, who we can release it to, and in what manner we can release it.

Therefore, it is important to note that even if you focus your request as suggested above, there will still be some information, that you have requested, that we will not be able to provide you with, as disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and in Section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

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.