Three grants totalling £15,000 have been awarded to early career researchers to support projects related to the growth and development of the Scottish shellfish farming industry.

The chosen projects, which arose from collaborations formed at an early career shellfish researcher workshop in Oban last November, have been developed to reflect the priorities identified in a shellfish grower survey conducted by the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute.

The research topics represented amongst the chosen projects are broad, but all tie in to the common theme of supporting the Scottish shellfish industry.

An international collaboration of researchers will be led by Stirling University PhD student James Fennell, who will investigate trends in blue mussel spat settlement for aquaculture. Fennell hopes to directly involve Scottish mussel growers in his research.

"Our growers have a vast practical knowledge of the marine environment upon which we all depend to maintain both wild and cultivated shellfish stocks. Having the academic community engage in discussions and consider our priorities is a real positive development which pairs the researchers’ skills with the expertise and long-term observations of our producer businesses," said Nick Lake, Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers (ASSG) CEO, in a press release.

Dr Kati Michalek and Dr Marja van den Houten from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) will pilot a Coastal Local Observations Connection Hub in a project devised with the help of a Durham University collaborator. This project will provide free environmental monitoring equipment to a small number of growers in western Scotland and develop a shared interactive platform that facilitates broad scale modelling and monitoring data sets for the coastal environment.

And finally, taking an innovative angle to support industry needs, a collaboration between researchers from Bangor University, The University of Aberdeen and University College Cork will look at how social media, including TikTok and Instagram, can effectively leverage trends and promote shellfish to different age profile audiences. This will complement existing work being led by Kelly Wright the Scottish Cultivated Shellfish Ambassador.

"It is really exciting to see rising academic stars engage so positively with industry priorities, and I hope that the small projects here will spark close ongoing collaboration for the benefit of the seafood sector and marine environment,” concluded Eleanor Adamson, representative of the Fishmongers’ Company’s Fisheries Charitable Trust, which funded the initiative.

Results of all three projects will be presented in person at this year’s annual ASSG conference, to be held from 1 - 2 October, 2025, in Oban.

Source - https://thefishsite.com