Meet the Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Studies team
Our Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine team aren’t just lecturers, they’re renowned experts with backgrounds as industry professionals, PhD researchers, and field specialists. In addition, we regularly engage a number of industry experts to support the curriculum and inject additional industry experience and insights to our students education.
George Hide
- Undergraduate at Swansea University and postgraduate at Plymouth University, completing an MSc in Applied Fish Biology
- Industry background in salmon and trout farming working for a large multinational salmon producer in Scotland, with brief spells in Canada and Chile
- Maintains extensive contacts with the UK aquaculture industry, in particular with commercial feed manufacturers
- Manages Sparsholt’s fish trial facilities and involved in collaborative research into commercial salmonid, coarse and ornamental fish diets
- In 2018, awarded Hugh Jones Memorial Trophy for ‘Distinguished Services to Aquaculture’
- Subject specialisms include fish health and welfare, with recent work auditing the welfare of farmed sturgeon in Azerbaijan.
Dr Kerry Perkins
- Over 13 years’ experience in the Aquarium industry working in New Zealand, USA and the UK
- Worked in unique research environments from diving under commercial mussel farms in New Zealand to sifting through museum collections in the UK
- Broad research interests from Life Support Systems in a commercial setting through to fish and invertebrate welfare
- Focus on cephalopod welfare and biology and has worked with the European Union on cephalopod research legislation.
Colette Gibbings
- Obtained a BSc in Freshwater and Marine Biology from the University of Hull
- 13 years’ experience within the UK Aquarium industry, with over 10 years at ZSL London Zoo with a curatorial focus on aquatic invertebrates, specifically corals
- Specialises in coral husbandry and conservation techniques and opened the UK’s largest coral reef exhibit in 2021
- Selected to join an expedition to save the world’s rarest coral from potential extinction
- A founding member of the first BIAZA Jellyfish Focus Group for the UK and conducted the first UK Jellyfish Conference
- Studied Rewilding, and has a strong passion for resetting ecosystem processes and restoring the land and sea to help biodiversity, the climate and our own health.