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Aquaculture General News

STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENTS RECOGNISED

Students Achievements Recognised

Students achievements recognised as prizes were awarded to fifteen NAFC Marine Centre UHI students on Friday at the Centre’s annual awards ceremony. The prizes recognised the students’ hard work and achievements during the academic year 2017/18 across a range of disciplines including aquaculture, fishing, engineering and navigation.

The awards were presented before an invited audience by guest speaker Tavish Scott MSP and Captain George Sutherland (NAFC Trustee, representing the Northern Lighthouse Board and Bells Nautical Trust). In his opening remarks, Mr Scott paid tribute to the prize winners and to all of NAFC’s students over the past year. He also highlighted the success and growth of NAFC since it started training students more than 25 years ago, and the national and international reputation and recognition that it has gained during that time, as well as the Centre’s important role in making the case for the importance of seafood to Shetland.

Among the awards presented this year was a new prize in memory of the late Ertie Nicolson and NAFC Principal Willie Shannon welcomed Ertie’s family, wife Margaret and children Faith and Phillip, who were present to see the new prize being awarded. Ertie had a long association with NAFC, and with Shetland’s seafood industries. In fact his involvement with the Centre preceded its creation – as Chairman of the Shetland Fish Processor’s Asscociation, Ertie was one of the original signatories of the deed that created the Shetland Fisheries Training Centre Trust, the charity set up to establish a fisheries college in Shetland.

Following its opening, Ertie worked in NAFC in various roles, including for Shetland Seafood Quality Control, NAFC itself, and for the SIC, where he helped develop its Coastal Zone Management function before taking over as the Development Department’s Head of Fisheries. Following his retirement Ertie continued his association with NAFC, serving as a Trustee of the Shetland Fisheries Training Centre Trust for ten years from 2004 to 2014, and as Chairman of the Trust for the last three of those years.

The new Ertie Nicolson Prize, which is sponsored by the Hunter and Morrison Trust, is awarded for the best student completing a Technical Apprenticeship in Aquaculture Management, the ground-breaking new professional development programme in Aquaculture Management developed by NAFC. The prize was awarded to John McCulloch of Cooke Aquaculture, based at their Quoys Hatchery in Unst, who recently became the first student to complete the award (see https://www.nafc.uhi.ac.uk/news/national-first-for-john-and-for-nafc.html). NAFC’s Head of Aquaculture Training, Stuart Fitzsimmons commented that John had been an excellent student overall and was a worthy winner of the new prize. He noted also that the new course was attracting world-wide interest from aquaculture staff interested in undertaking it.

The prize-winners are only a few of the more than 1,300 students that enrolled on full or part-time courses at the NAFC Marine Centre over the last academic year (equivalent to more than 150 full-time students).

Full List of Prizewinners