· FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Semi-quantitive electrofishing data: EIR release
Information requested
Semi-quantitive electrofishing data, specifically species counts from semi-quantitative/single pass surveys or the first pass of a quantitative survey – if available. For the most recent 10 years – or near enough. In your intial request you asked that the data include should include; species, abundance, date, location; any information on survey area and method.
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.
Please find the data that you have requested in the spreadsheet enclosed with this reply.
In the attached spreadsheet "visit area" represents the wetted area recorded at the time of fishing calculated from a series of length and width measurements, "Recorded visit area" indicates the fished area where there are no recordings of individual length and width measurements, site average wetted width, provides an average wetted width across all site visits for "marked sites" where the location and length of the site has been fixed across years. We have also provided information on whether electrofishing has been undertaken with a backpack or bank based electrofishing equipment (generator and control box) and whether stop nets were installed for the survey.
These data are subject to Cown Copyright. Please ensure that Marine Scotland Science is acknowledged as the source of these data in any presentations or publications.
Detected exemption language
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.