SAIC secures £10m to help industry thrive
THE Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) plans to focus on small and medium sized enterprises over the next five years, after securing its second phase of funding, worth £10 million.
It will also use the money to develop aquaculture skills and talent across Scotland through a mentoring scheme; working with undergraduates and schools to build awareness of aquaculture as a career; and furthering the Women in Scottish Aquaculture (WiSA) network.
The investment comes from the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise, and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and is expected to be supplemented by £3.5 million secured from third parties.
During its first five-year phase, SAIC turned its funding of £6.75 million into a portfolio valued at £42.6 million, spread across 47 initiatives. Of the total figure invested, £33.8 million came from industry and other partners – leading to the creation of more than 200 jobs, largely in rural areas.
SAIC also funded the studies of 92 MSc and PhD students. In the latest phase, SAIC said it will share innovation throughout the industry by organising workshops, conferences, and ‘disseminating information in new ways’. The innovation centre will host Gill Health Initiative 2020 in April next year.
Heather Jones, CEO of SAIC, said: ‘The world has an insatiable appetite for protein. In salmon and other seafood, Scotland is producing globally recognised, sustainably sourced premium products to match that need. Innovation has been, and will continue to be, an integral part of how we help the industry enhance fish health and wellbeing, reduce losses, and enable businesses of all sizes to grow.
‘Over the next five years, we will build on Scottish aquaculture’s existing foundations to establish a low carbon, hi-tech, data rich, and cutting edge sector that is led by pioneering research aligned with genuine industry need.’
Richard Lochhead, minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science, said SAIC will ‘remain a catalyst for growth in a key national industry which enjoys international success, securing future jobs and sustainable economic growth’.
‘The government is working hard to ensure the aquaculture industry continues to thrive.’
THE Prince of Wales is supporting a campaign to try to halt the decline of wild salmon stocks, which are described as being in ‘crisis’.
Figures for salmon returning to UK spawning grounds have fallen so low that conservationists fear wild Atlantic salmon could be lost from many rivers over the next 50 years.
Organisations across the UK and the Atlantic have been seeking reasons for the decline and undertaking local conservation measures.
Now, angling bodies, including Salmon & the Conservation and with Trout Game the Fish Trust, Angling Conservation, the Legal, & Wildlife Atlantic Salmon Trust, have Trust joined the Alliance. Missing forces Salmon to form patron Prince of Charles, the Atlantic Salmon Trust and Salmon & Trout Conservation, said in a video message at the launch last month:‘The very future of a species that has been swimming in our oceans and seas for over six million years will be in jeopardy....We simply cannot allow this to happen in our lifetime.
‘Having our four leading salmon conservation organisations working together, through the Missing Salmon Alliance with support from both the private and public sectors, is hugely encouraging,’ he told the gathering in Fishmongers’ Hall, London.
The Scottish government’s Salmon Fishery Statistics have shown a general decline in large multi-sea-winter salmon since records began in 1952 and a sharp decline in both multi-sea-winter salmon and one-sea-winter salmon between 2010 and 2014. Catches were at their lowest on record in 2018.
Earlier this year, the Atlantic Salmon Trust launched the Missing Salmon Project in the Moray Firth, the largest salmon acoustic tracking project in Europe.