UK Aquaculture Initiative Network. Aquaculture Research Collaborative Hub -UK (ARCH-UK)

The UK aquaculture sector contributes around £600 million to a UK seafood industry worth at £6.3 billion in 2016. The UK seafood market is complex and includes large added value through wild fish imports, and both wild and farmed seafood exports. Within the UK the aquaculture sector in England, Wales and N. Ireland collectively produce 19,000 metric tons (mt) of shellfish and 9,200 mt of trout, with production coming mainly from SMEs. Scotland is a major producer of Atlantic salmon (>163,000 mt; third largest producer globally) and the industry is both highly consolidated and export focused. In Scotland there is also significant trout (6,000 mt) and shellfish (6,300 mt) production. There is also a significant and expanding aquaculture industry in England, Wales and Ireland, most notably for shellfish with the largest single UK shellfish farm in Southwest England.

In order for the UK to remain competitive within this rapidly growing sector it is essential that the expansion of the industry is supported by high quality, innovative research to better understand the basic biology, health and environmental interactions of farmed fish and shellfish and to ensure a sustainable future. In this application it is proposed that a single aquaculture network called the Aquaculture Research Collaborative Hub-UK (ARCH-UK) will be established operating through two groups, the Finfish Aquaculture Group and the Shellfish Aquaculture Group to support the development of scientific knowledge and technological capability to help to provide solutions to the shared and specific issues preventing growth in all sectors in the UK aquaculture industry.

ARCH will develop a community of academic based researchers and related businesses to foster collaborative activities to help identify and develop new approaches to tackle major research and innovation challenges and to help deliver key benefits to the UK aquaculture sector. The network will draw in researchers from the main disciplines of biological and environmental sciences and will actively engage with researchers from engineering, economics, social science, remote sensing and computational modelling.

The ARCH network will consist of a management group Hub and working groups. The network will be led by PIs from the University of Stirling and Swansea University, supported by Co-Is from the University of Aberdeen and University of Exeter. A management Hub will be made up from the PIs, CoIs, network managers, workgroup leaders and the KE Fellow, and will meet to discuss the aims, objective, progress and outputs of the network.

Within the network there will be two groups - Finfish and Shellfish - reflecting the differences in principles, practice and challenges in the two main UK aquaculture sectors. Each group will have their own work groups that will focus on UK wide aquaculture priorities. The Finfish Group will be led by Brendan McAndrew and the Shellfish Group (SAG) by Andrew Rowley. The work groups (WG) will be led by an experienced academic who will convene an open network of leading academic, industry, governmental and regulatory stakeholders. They will be assisted in this by the respective network managers, based at Stirling and Swansea, who will ensure the widest possible engagement with the relevant scientific and stakeholders and an open request for membership of the different WGs. Each WG will work to develop a concise and focused set of research priorities which will reflect the view of the members of the WG and the wider community that they represent, as well as the medium to long term priority requirements of the industry. The latter will be achieved by consultation and feedback from relevant stakeholder organisations and a process of expert elicitation using experienced facilitators, Hub and WG resources. The outputs from the various WGs will be made available to the stakeholder community via the ARCH website and trade organisations. The management Hub will have to responsibility to ensure that duplication of effort between the WGs is avoided.

An integrated aquaculture network, called the Aquaculture Research Collaborative Hub-UK (ARCH-UK) will be established. This will:

1. Facilitate the exchange of knowledge between academia and other stakeholders, including industry.
2. Support the UK Aquaculture Initiative by providing expertise and strategic advice on potential priorities for future research funding.
3. Assist in developing early career researchers and others new to aquaculture. This will create a community of new researcher with the ability to assist industry in future years.

Overall, ARCH-UK will build capacity and expertise in sustainable aquaculture and thereby make a valuable contribution to national food security.