Alongside his consultancy work, in recent decades he has been applying the same skills-set to addressing issues closer to home – contributing to strategic planning and development in his home town and region in the South of Scotland as a community representative – variously in roles as a community councillor; convenor of the planning committee of the community council; as an instigator, officer and trustee of a local development trust at the forefront of taking land and built assets under community ownership and management; and as a community representative in the design and delivery of a regional economic strategy for the South of Scotland.

He has advised at senior levels in national government, has worked with the senior management teams of public sector bodies, and advised corporate managers on various aspects of policy, reform, development and improved decision-making. Clients have included the World Bank, FAO and the European Commission; International Development Banks and national development agencies; national governments and local administrations. He has worked with private businesses, international management consultants, academia and environmental agencies and NGOs. He has regularly contributed to the formulation of policy in the matter of fishery sector management, sustainable development, international trade, the rules governing public agency operation and support to private sector development, and the rules governing competition between public and private bodies. He was involved in the establishment and testing of the internationally recognised environmental standard that is the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) tick mark, denoting product from a well-managed fishery. He has also headed up a large number of evaluations of multi-million dollar projects and programmes – covering marine conservation; fishery sector management; fishery governance; fishery surveillance; and financial support systems to developed and developing world fisheries.

To give a flavour of the evolution of his work, as an undergraduate he spent formative time with the Akawio amerindian tribe in the highland forests of the Upper Mazaruni, Guyana whilst studying the invertebrate ecology of caves. A few years later he was a fishery officer in the southern Sahel in the years following the Biafran War helping lay the foundations to the management of commercial small-scale fisheries in complex dry-zone wetlands. This was followed by research into the commercialisation of deep sea fishing for blue whiting to the north west of the British Isles – a new frontier in terms of both the environment and the technological innovations needed to harvest and process fish from depth and in vast quantities. In early consultancy assignments he found himself raising the horizons of the fishermen and seafood traders of northern Scotland encouraging them to embrace market opportunities in continental Europe (an almost no-go area at the time); developing a commercial operational model for artisanal tuna fisheries in the island state of Tuvalu (the former Ellis Islands); and spent almost a year on the southern Atlantic island of Saint Helena (home to Napoleon in exile and where he died) commercialising the local fishing industry.Early on he was seen as something of a specialist in addressing the logistical and socio-economic issues of developing island and desert fishery industries – in the islands of the north and south Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific; and desert regions in most of the countries of the Middle East, in the horn of Africa, and in the Sahel. Later exploits dealt with the many issues of the UK’s entry into the European Community, and in the evolution of the EU Common Fisheries Policy, and within this timeframe the transition of countries in Eastern Europe to a market economy following the dismantling of the Iron Curtain, and later preparing countries for accession to membership of the European Union.

He joined, as a junior consultant, a select group of former directors of the UK White Fish Authority (WFA) (at the time recently relocated from Epsom in Surrey, England, to Edinburgh in Scotland) who had set up one of the country’s first commercial fishery consultancies, working out of offices above a Merchant Bank in the City of London. Hot-foot from completing his Masters in Technological Economics, his job was to work with the former, and first, Chief Economist of the WFA to boost the company’s work on fishery economics, seafood markets, international trade, and feasibility and investment analysis for commercial fishery developments. Work embraced the seafood markets of Western Europe, a review of the international trade in and markets for canned tuna, fisheries developments in the UAE, Seychelles, and Tuvalu, testing the techno-economics of flying of fish from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum in the Sudan, and spending near-on a year on the southern Atlantic island of St Helena.

Early and unusual exposure to the commercial world, operating as a Sales Rep selling a range of silicone surgical products, most used in implant surgery, for use in hospitals. These included implants used in maxillofacial reconstructive surgery, and implants used in the alleviation of day to day incapacities of chronic conditions such as osteoarthritis in hand and foot surgery. Other products addressed conditions such as hydrocephalus and others urinary tract issues – alongside more self-evident products such as mammary prostheses (used in cosmetic procedures, but at this time just starting to be used in reconstructive surgery following mastectomies).

From a base just outside the largest walled city in Africa, Kano, the post formed part of a small Fishery Section in the Ministry of Agriculture for Kano State, northern Nigerian, in the southern Sahel. The focus of work was to help strengthen the management of small-scale subsistence and commercial flood-plain fisheries, construct and manage the first fish farms in the state, and undertake the stocking of newly constructed irrigation schemes. In practice it was an introduction to the ecological complexities of dry-zone fisheries (it rained for little more than three weeks a year), the weird and wonderful world of mormyrids (elephant nosed fish), lungfish and electric fish, and the vibrancy of multi-ethnic Sahelian culture and traditions, not least the Hausa emirates, the nomadic Fulani herdsmen, and the blue robed, indigo turbaned and sword-carrying Tuareg night watchmen.