FOI · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Palaemon serratus landings statistics 2000-2024 in UK: EIR release
Information requested
‘landing trends of the common prawn (Palaemon serratus) in Great Britain between2000 and 2024.
I am writing to ask whether you hold data that includes the following variables for this species and time period:
Landed weight (tonnes) Landed value (GBP) Gear type Landing dates Landing port Vessel nationality Vessel length category Number of vessels per port’
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.
Response to your request
Some of the information you have requested can be found in the attached spreadsheet marked Annex A.
On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, an exception has been applied in line with the EIRs. Details on this exception and an explanation of the information provided can be found below.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance an exception under Regulation 11, Personal Data, has been applied to some of the information requested.
This is because we treat some of the information submitted to us by fishing vessels 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.
Information has been redacted under Regulation 11 (Personal Data), as it contains personal information, or data that can be used to identify individuals and 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.
Where there is data in the spreadsheet that we cannot release for the reason given above, we have removed as ‘disclosive data’.
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.
It is also important to note that although we have supplied the UK data as requested, because we hold this, the official source for UK data is the Marine Management Organisation (MMO). They publish a detailed data set which contains most of the information you have requested and can be downloaded from the link provided below:
UK sea fisheries annual statistics report 2024
The information requested can be found in the ODS file “UK fleet landings by rectangle stock port and EEZ 2020-2024”.
In addition, the information we have provided in our spreadsheet will differ from this, particularly for non-Scottish vessel data for under 10m vessels were a different source was used by MMO for quality reasons.
More information on this difference is mentioned in the introduction section of our publication, which can be found here:
Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2024.
Although it is small in overall terms, for this particular data which relates to a very small group of vessels and a specific species, the impact could be large. Therefore, we would recommend using the published dataset or contacting MMO directly for further information on this topic.
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.
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. Information has been redacted under Regulation 11 (Personal Data), as it contains personal information, or data that can be used to identify individuals and 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.