Daniel holds an HNC in Fisheries Science and Technology from the NAFC Marine Centre and obtained a B.Sc. in Applied Marine Biology from Heriot Watt University in 2007. During his time at Heriot Watt he worked as a part of a Lobster re-stocking program at the NAFC Marine Centre and carried out his own investigations into release methods, feeding strategies and substrate selection preferences of settling lobster larvae. Following this, his honours project was on the substrate preference of commercially imortant decapod crustaceans. Daniel then worked in a marine hatchery on a graduate traineeship, and has other working experience in aquaculture and shellfish fishing.

Daniel is employed as a shellfish technician within the Marine Science section. He is responsible for the collection of fisheries data that is used in the annual shellfish stock assessments carried on behalf of the Shetland Shellfish Management Organisation.