18 August, 2006

ENVIRONMENTAL watchdogs SEPA have brought in an electronic approach to monitoring the seabed under fish farm cages, to ease back on bureaucracy.

To reduce the "mountain of paperwork" involved in regular seabed monitoring, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency has developed an electronic template that will enable reports of the surveys, which are usually carried out by a consultant on the fish farmer's behalf, to be submitted on CD.

The new system is based on a simple spreadsheet with pages provided which set out details of the reporting requirements.

In addition to being better for the environment, this approach will allow consultants to easily submit consistent reports to SEPA electronically, leading to faster reporting.

SEPA's Douglas Sinclair said: "This new system will see a significant reduction in paper documents to file, and an increase in the speed and efficiency of evaluating these surveys and reporting back to the operators.

"An additional benefit will be to allow a more full analysis of the very useful data contained in the reports, ensuring we make the best use of the information submitted by the fish farming industry."

The new templates can be downloaded from the SEPA aquaculture webpage at www.sepa.org.uk/aquaculture/policies/index.htm from 23 August 2006 and will be used as the format for the submission of new reports from 1 September.